A Life Without
by Reichenbach
Summary: If Doomsday had ended a little differently.
1. Chapter 1

"You can fight with him this morning," Jackie told her husband before she was even out of bed. She knew how she felt, and her body was telling her that shifting and going back to sleep was the best thing for her, or she'd risk another bout of exhaustion, which would do the baby no good. Rubbing her six-month-gone stomach, she adjusted the pillow and shifted her hips, waiting for Pete to say something.

When she turned her head to look at him, he was laying on his side, arm propped under his head and watching her wriggle. "He doesn't listen to me."

Jackie frowned, sinking her head into the pillow. "He can't just stay in the attic all day any more. I'd say to lock it, but I know how useless that'd be. Filling it with cement's about the only way to keep him out of there."

Pete kissed her cheek, his hand resting against her naked bulge. "Unless he's at Torchwood, stealing our stuff and making trouble. Jacks, you're the only one that can get him up and about. If you don't want to, I understand. I don't want you overdoing it again. But I'm not going to waste my breath."

Even though it meant a late start to the day, Jackie slept in. It felt like an old bad habit was rearing its ugly head; she'd been getting up at a too early to be a respectable hour with Pete every morning since she got here. But she felt better for it, and Pete had felt the need to stay with her, instead of going into the office first thing in the morning. 

It gave her enough energy to tackle her usual first chore of the day.

Opening the door to the attic, she called up the steps. "Get down here and eat breakfast, you lout!" She had better insults, but she was a tad groggy still. "Right now, mister. You have to eat with the rest of us…"

Usually he'd have insulted her back by that point. When he wasn't in a mood—that was when she was worried. Sighing at what that meant, she climbed up the attic steps and looked around at the open space filled with books and gadgets. "Where did you get to now?"

She didn't spend much time looking for him, though. He wasn't up here, that was for certain. Pete would be getting a call from Torchwood soon, to come in and sort the mess their indefinite houseguest had no doubt caused.

Doing her best impression of a penguin the whole way to the kitchen, she almost died of shock at what she saw before her. The Doctor, dressed in clean clothes, eating cereal from a small mixing bowl with a tablespoon, one trainer-clad foot resting on his knee, the newspaper open on the table in front of him. 

He pushed the glasses up on his nose, turned the page, then shoveled in another spoonful of sugary flakes, not acknowledging her presence. 

Ilsa, their cook, shrugged and went back to stirring something on the stove. It was so weird to have a cook, such a far cry from where here life had been seven or eight months ago, but she was coping with the changes. She'd lost one daughter, gained another, and her husband. In addition to this sad, slightly pathetic pet project of hers—the Doctor. 

As she did every morning when she woke, and every night before she went to bed, she wondered what Rose was doing—if she was safe, if she was happy. She also wondered how her daughter had ever put up with the nine hundred year old alien with the messy hair who was currently slurping milk out of the bottom of the bowl like a small child. 

Today was hopefully going to be a better day for him. He seemed to go in cycles. 

Of course, anything was a sight better than watching him angrily bang his hands raw on that wall, then listening to him apologise for something she didn't blame him for (he should have made note of the day—there wasn't much that Jackie didn't blame on him). Then he'd walked out of the building and away from them, something vacant and lost about him. 

He'd been like a sad, orphaned puppy when Mickey had brought him to the house about eight hours later, drenched to the bone and teeth chattering from the cold November weather. Mickey said he'd found him just wandering in the rain, his eyes glassy and the rest of him listless. It broke her own heart to see him so broken hearted, which was something she didn't know she was capable of.

That night she'd gotten him settled, talking to him and treating him as though he were a dull child. She had her own wounds, but he needed looking after, and it kept her busy. Later on, after he was tucked into a bed, staring at the wall without sleeping, Pete had consoled her, in the only way he knew. 

Jackie rubbed her belly—the baby was awake already. And that was how her strange little family had come to be. "I think we might be ready for the Second Coming—look who's come down from the attic all on his own."

Wiggling his foot as he turned another page, the Doctor looked up for a moment from his reading. "And a good morning to you, too, Jackie. And how is Mini-Tyler this fine, glorious morning?"

Sitting across from him at the small kitchen table that sat in front of the sliding glass doors, she looked at him critically. "Should I have you checked over for alien spores or something? What's brought this on?"

His smile began to wilt right before her eyes, and she regretted saying anything at all. Realising this, he turned quickly back to the newspaper. "I should leave."

Jackie's eyes narrowed as she took the cup from Ilsa. "If you even try, I'll make Pete find you. Torchwood will have you hunted down so fast you won't know what happened."

Contemplating his own image in the back of his spoon, the Doctor thought about this for a moment. "I can't stay here forever, Jackie. Thank you. I appreciate it. You—I—thanks. But…I don't sit still for this long."

Tapping the table with her finger, Jackie leaned in to whisper harshly, "And just what are you going to do? Where're you going to go? You're just going to wander?"

Closing the newspaper, he folded the section with a fastidiousness that was quite unlike him. "Yes."

Pushing her chair away from the table, Jackie got up in a bit of a huff. "Well, you're not leaving. So tough." He was a Time Lord without a time machine, just how far did he think he could get? Obviously not far enough to escape what was really bothering him. "We all miss Rose."

"Jackie—this isn't about—look." He'd been at a loss for words a lot, recently. She wasn't sure what it meant. "I just have to go." 

Leaving the pinstriped suit jacket on the back of the chair, the Doctor got up and left. 

Sitting back down, she sighed. Dammit. Everything had been perfectly fine, for once. And SHE was the one that had to go and ruin it. Looking out into the blooming late-May garden, she wondered if and when he'd wander back to Pete's house to hole himself up in the attic for days and days working on endless 'projects' made out of bits and baubles taken without permission from Torchwood.

It was another Tuesday in the Tyler household.

xyz

"Thank you, Ianto." Rose lifted the paper cup to her lips, letting the coffee vapours permeate her brain, hopefully to keep her awake for just a bit longer. "And about that matter we discussed earlier?"

His eyebrows raised slightly and he looked around, perhaps wondering if it could be discussed. 

Rose nodded—the tent was secure. Taking a small sip of the burning hot coffee, she waited for him to explain himself.

The young man looked into the crater of freshly dug earth and the artifacts contained therein, still partially imbedded in the clay. Ianto didn't look at her; he didn't do that if he didn't have to. She had put a bullet in the head of the love of his life…right in front of him. She wasn't cruel enough to expect that he'd accept her with open arms, or even want to be near her. "All of Torchwood's files on the Doctor now only exist in one location: your computer."

She put her coffee down on the table behind her, crouching on the edge of the hole, locks of hair falling from over her shoulders and into her face as she inspected the relics. "Good. And they'll be deleted as soon as I'm through with them."

Sliding into the gap, she brushed some of the rich orange earth from her jeans then straddled the objects, seven in all, looking closely at the metal cylinder. For as old as it had been dated to be, it amazingly showed no signs of environmental wear, or even rust. That wasn't the part that interested her, though—it was the symbol on the clasp that held the cylinder closed. "I've seen this before." Like an infinity symbol but…more elegant. There'd only been one place she'd ever seen it—the TARDIS. That was what made this important. 

They'd sent a few images to her phone, and she'd been intrigued right away, but when she saw the small case and the symbol, she'd had them cease digging immediately, until she could look at it. "I want this stuff in my office by morning," she informed her right hand man. "I'm going to get some sleep."

Accepting Ianto's help in crawling out of the earth, Rose rubbed her hands to get off the worst of the dirt then tugged the edges of her black leather jacket downward, and pulled the zip up to her chin. "Make sure it's actual sleep," he urged, passing the coffee cup back to her.

Rose had to smile as she got to the flap opening of the tent. "Maybe this time, Ianto. Keep warm."

Walking across the wet, cold earth and back toward the ugly green bug that formerly belonged to Mickey Smith, she waved to the other remaining members of Torchwood One. Fourteen of them in all—devastation in an office that once boasted three hundred employees.

She hadn't been with Torchwood during the invasion, but she'd been here for the aftermath. The screams of the dying and partially converted, the blood on the walls, scorch marks on the cement stair wells… It had almost knocked her out of her daze, and it gave her a sense of purpose after everything in her life vanished with that final closing of the void. 

Turning the key in the ignition, she listened for the sound of the engine turning over, and got almost nothing. Another few tries, and it started. It took a few moments for it to warm up, which was all her mind needed to travel back to that day. 

They'd thought they were invincible before that—solving every problem and laughing while doing so. Then the Cybermen and the Daleks came, courtesy of Torchwood. They'd been trying to close the Void, to suck the monsters back into hell. They'd been so close—so nearly there, but the Doctor's lever had stuck, and the portal had begun closing…

And he'd done what the Doctor does…he'd tried to solve the problem. But not even he could have resisted the pull of the Void forever. 

She'd almost wanted to look away, but couldn't bring herself to break eye contact with him. It was a good thing, too. If she had looked away, she'd have never seen Pete pop back into this universe long enough to grab him and disappear again. She'd have lived the rest of her life thinking the Doctor had been pulled into the Void to save this world.

As it was, she'd spent she didn't know how long in numb mourning at the wall, wondering if it was possible for anyone to feel as alone as she felt at that moment. It was impossible to think of life beyond her cheek pressed against that wall—perhaps she could just stand there and wither and die, or be turned to stone and spend the rest of eternity as some weird statue, listening for something she'd never hear again. 

It was the cries of the injured that first broke through her near-catatonia, then distant yells of those trying to contain fires and deal with the aftermath. 

Somehow she managed to leave the ghost shift chamber—she'd always been kind of fuzzy on the details. The next thing she remembered was pointing and yelling, giving orders, organizing the few that were left to tend to those that could be saved, ordering that those half-converted with Earth materials, who hadn't been sucked into the Void, be put down as mercifully as possible. 

That was how she met Ianto. He'd been trying to drag Lisa to an empty office, so that she would not be amongst those killed by her colleagues, but she'd found him. They'd argued—she couldn't recall what had been said, she only had a hazy memory of her own voice echoing distantly, and yelling that the Doctor had not paid such a price—SHE had not paid such a price—to have the world destroyed by his girlfriend. 

It was hard, she knew. And a cruel assessment, especially when the full-body cyberisation had left the woman's face so cruelly in-tact. Ianto couldn't see that Lisa was gone. Maybe not entirely—but there was too much chance of tragedy befalling the world if any of the half-converted were to live. And it was just Rose, now. There would be no Doctor to save them from their compassion.

Doomsday. It wasn't the Cybermen or Daleks that had done it, but that was the day Rose Tyler had changed into someone she no longer recognised, fulfilling her mother's prophecy for her. That was the day that she took Ianto's side arm and killed Lisa for him. That was the day Rose had declared herself the head of Torchwood One; the day all of this started. Life without the Doctor—life without sanity, without pity, without her mother's tempering influence. Day One.

The car finally warmed up enough that she could trust it not to stall. Pulling out of the mud and frozen earth, the vehicle trembled as it hit the road and she sped off, back toward the office, and home. 

Amazingly, the few of them that had been left had not contested her declaration at the time. She'd been the only one giving orders, and they were a shabby lot—a few scientists, an office clerk, some researchers, two field agents, and Ianto. Ianto who did so much that so few people knew about. Ianto, who'd been brutalised far more by the events of that day than even Rose had been.

The reorganisation had happened almost organically over the following weeks; Ianto became her right hand man, as he'd been for Yvonne Hartman. They'd handled the task of cleanup silently, almost all thankful for something to keep their hands and minds occupied. Now they were putting most of their attention into finding naturally occurring rifts and studying their effects, in the hopes that something might present itself. 

The way the Doctor had been talking that day, the odds were so remote that she could get the Doctor back to where he belonged that they'd spend their energies better elsewhere. It didn't stop her of course. This universe had always needed the Doctor far more than it had needed Rose Tyler, who was, truthfully, a very poor substitute. Anything she could do to rectify the matter for the universe's sake, she would do. 

Unlocking her office, which was a glorified filing cupboard, she threw the empty coffee cup in the cardboard box being used as a rubbish bin next to her desk, a battered old thing missing a drawer. Sliding out of her coat, she tossed it on the chair, digging for a particular key on her key ring. 

The office was a joke, really. But she had more important things to worry about than what her workspace looked like—especially since she'd sort of usurped the job. 

Opening the TARDIS door, she stepped inside, sighing with relief to hear the ship's hum. "Honey, I'm home," she muttered, unwinding the scarf from around her neck before tossing it over the nearest rail. 

As if petting a cat, she stroked the console, giving the ship words of sympathy regarding leaving her all day. The TARDIS was in mourning, some of her systems were shutting down. Rose wondered how long it would be before she expired completely, but for now company seemed to help. "I miss him too," she whispered, before going off to the library.

After collecting books, she returned to the control room and sat at the base of the console. She did this every night, keeping some sort of odd vigil with the ship. It seemed like the least Rose could do; the ship had consoled her on that first night.

That first day had actually been two; it had taken that long to get everything under control. By the time she let herself into the TARDIS, she had been weary to the bone, the exhaustion taking precedence over everything else, except possibly grief.

Rose might have gone a little insane that day, she couldn't be sure. She'd been so calm giving orders, helping those that could be helped, organising and doing what needed to be done, no matter how wrong and painful. And every last bit done with an emotionless stoicism she'd never known. But the moment she'd entered the ship and sensed it's aloneness, she'd broken down, crying until she fell asleep at the base of the console, arms wrapped around herself. 

And so Rose kept the ship company at night, usually while she read, and usually until she passed out herself. That had been life for the last six months, since Day One of the end of the world.

Finding the symbol, she'd gotten a few pages in to the account of Rassilon, the heralded saviour of the Time Lords before she fell asleep with her head on the page, holding her place. The ship kept her there, wrapping Rose in the humming white noise of her remaining systems. 

Another Tuesday night at Torchwood.

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

It was a whispered chuckle, but the Doctor knew who it was, instantly. "Just stuff it," he whispered back. "Not in the mood."

The cord binding his wrists to the pipe behind him let loose finally and he turned his still-aching head in the dim light to glare at Mickey Smith who was grinning like a fool. "Leave it to you to march off in a sulk and still find a way to get into trouble."

Taking his sonic screwdriver from the young man, he looked around the cluttered space filled with old construction equipment and boxes of who knew what for an exit. "I wasn't sulking. And the Aenmzorians wouldn't have gotten a foothold here if Torchwood was doing its bloody job."

Mickey waved his hands. "Ooh, I'm scared. The high and mighty Time Lord might scold me."

Sighing, the Doctor found the nearest set of steps. He still had aliens to deal with, before he went back to his perfectly good sulk. "Look. Lets just get this done, hm?"

It had taken three hours to sort it all out, and even then they'd ended up needing Torchwood backup, which was just insulting. He probably could have sorted it on his own, given enough of a chance, but by the time he'd disabled the brainwave collection device, he just didn't feel like dealing with it any more. Before the men in black with the very large guns moved in to capture the sixteen alien research scientists, the Doctor just…walked out the back door, down the alley, and into the mix of rush hour traffic.

It was a shame, really. He'd almost felt like his old self. For a moment or two, it had almost felt like his old universe.

Except there…well, somehow it was usually more humourous and less insulting when his companions had to get him out of a jam back there. Maybe it was that there was no one here that he really wanted to get into the thick of things with. Maybe it was that there were no quick exists here. No jumping in the TARDIS and swanning off to the next batch of trouble.

Maybe it was just this universe. With its zeppelins, strange politics and even stranger currency, its unfamiliar stars, different skylines and foreign taste to the air. Maybe that's all it was, this place. Something as simple as being so far from the familiar…

Whatever it was, he hated it here.

Wandering past a building with highly reflective windows, he squinted in the blinding late-afternoon light, and almost ran into the group of people being spat out by the revolving door. Skipping out of their path, he looked back at the office zombies in their neat and tidy suits with their bags and cases, all going home for the day.

He hated revolving doors. They were nasty and evil and a little scary. They just went around and around, and there was that brief moment when you were trapped in the little pie shaped section, not knowing if you'd get to the other side…

Mostly he just plain old missed home.

XYZ

Rose didn't wake until someone knocked on the TARDIS door. Even then it wasn't until the ship nudged her mind that she got coherent enough to actually act.

Dragging herself to her feet, she ran a hand through her hair and clomped down the ramp. With a yawn, she opened the door.

Ianto, looking entirely too put together, not to mention awake and far too fresh in his lint-free and impeccably tailored suit took a step back, which meant she must have looked a fright. Well, she was still wearing yesterday's clothes, dirty-caked shoes and all. "Sorry to wake you."

Squinting at her watch, she blinked a few times, not really believing what it said. "I slept for six hours. A new world record." Rubbing her cheek, she looked past him, to the shallow wooden box on her desk. "Guess it's time ta get back to work. Lemme change."

She didn't do it often, because the TARDIS was her private place, but she was especially lonely today and needed the company. Stepping aside, she gestured for Ianto to come in.

He obeyed; looking around uncomfortably at the interior of the living ship, then followed her further in after she'd shut the door behind him. "You can catch me up on what's been happening while I've been sleeping."

At her room, Ianto stopped at the door. There was something comfortable about this—it wasn't really letting someone in, if they hated you. So it was OK. Twisted logic, but it was games like this that helped her get through the day. There wasn't the strength left within her to mourn and she lacked the energy to deal with the shambles that her reality had become. All she could do was press onward and take the ounce of comfort she could steal, here and there.

Without a care for what Ianto was seeing or not seeing, she changed into a pair of jeans not caked with dirt and a short-sleeved black button-down shirt, then slipped into the bathroom to wash her face and run a brush through her tangled hair. She didn't bother with makeup very often these days. In fact, she hadn't even had a haircut since before all of this had started. She spent most of her time teaching Torchwood how to be the Doctor, and the rest of her time trying to find a way to bring him back.

She knew it was obsessive and her mother wouldn't approve. Which didn't stop her one bit.

Drying her face, she noticed Ianto had stopped talking. "Wait, what?"

Ianto was leaning against the doorway, looking at the half of the room opposite where Rose now stood. "The head of Cardiff branch wants to come down and look at the artifacts."

Throwing the hand towel on the floor, Rose frowned. "And just how the hell did he find out about the dig? I want to know who leaked it." Cardiff and London had been engaged in a game of subterfuge even before she'd come on the scene. She'd demanded to speak to the head of the Cardiff branch shortly after she took over, and he'd refused to speak to her. Hell—she couldn't even get a name. So she decided if he wanted to play it like that, well, then she could do the same. She'd refused to give her own name, much less a list of who or how many people were still in the London office, even after months of demands.

Mostly she continued the game because she didn't want to be contested for control of the London branch. She had persuaded fourteen people lost for direction that she was their best chance of keeping Earth safe, but how would that hold up with another head? Not too good, if she had to venture a guess. But when it came down to it—she needed the London branch far more than they needed her. Power vacuums were quickly filled, she'd learned in her time with the Doctor. Someone else would probably have put this place back together. But if she was going to find some way into that other universe, Torchwood was her only hope.

Ianto promised that he'd look into the matter of how Cardiff had become privy to the information on the dig, considering the news was only twenty-four hours old.

Finding something to pull her hair back with, she ordered Ianto to inform their Cardiff friends that London found it, therefore they had first dibs, and then when London was done, then they were welcome to sloppy seconds. "But don't say sloppy seconds," she amended, sliding her still-muddy trainers back on.

A small smile of amusement crossed his lips. It wasn't often that she saw him smile. "I'll think of something."

XYZ

It was dark by the time Pete slowed the jeep, keeping an even pace with the figure walking down the pavement. "At least come back for dinner."

The Doctor continued to shuffle along, looking at his feet intently as he went, not bothering to respond.

Sighing, Pete let his arm hang out the window, dangling as he went along. "Ok, do it for me, then."

That actually got him a glance from the Doctor. "Look at it this way. If you don't come back, and eat dinner in this quazi-normal thing Jackie has going on, who's going to take the brunt of her anger, huh? Me, mate. That's who. So come back, pick at the roast, push things around on your plate, and then you can take off for parts unknown tonight while she's sleeping. Sound fair enough?"

Without another word, the Doctor got into the vehicle, slamming the door in protest. He looked straight ahead, but Pete could see from the flickering, bending light of the streetlamps as they passed that the Doctor's lips were pressed together, making a grim face.

Turning at the corner, the balding man tried to keep his patience. "Thank you for your help today. We'd have never known they were in that building without you. The offer still stands, you know. To come and work at Torchwood. At least think of how much we could learn from you."

The Doctor looked down at his spread palms for a moment, deep in thought. "I could give you an answer about not interfering with Earth development and some such. But mostly…I just don't want to."

"So you're just going to keep making trouble with Jackie."

Shaking his head, a bitter laugh escaped the alien. "That's why I have to leave. You know, I've been stuck on Earth without a TARDIS before. That was purgatory. But if that was purgatory, this is hell. I might have had to deal with what humans pass off as scientists, the military and the UN, but at least I didn't have to deal with Jackie Tyler, telling me what to do."

Pete had to chuckle. "Welcome to my world, mate."

The Doctor glared at him critically. "Who're you kidding? You love it." Looking away, he watched the lampposts as they passed by. "Some people say there's someone for everybody, and I guess that just proves it right. There's even someone for Jackie Bloody Tyler, you poor damned sod." He shifted in his seat, his mood growing even darker. "I hate her."

They drove the rest of the way in silence. Pete couldn't exactly think of a come back for that. He knew it wasn't about Jackie. Not really. And at least it wasn't raining, or snowing, as it had been a few times when they'd set out to retrieve him. And he usually came pretty willingly—it wasn't as if he had anywhere else to go.

Pete knew the Doctor had enough ingenuity to do or become anything he wanted in this world. Hell, the Doctor could have been out of sight and out of mind and unfindable if he really wanted to be—there'd be no retrieving him off of random street corners or from random parks at three in the morning or whenever Jackie had decided he'd wandered long enough.

The Doctor just seemed to have lost his…oompf. Pete was sure there was a fancy word for it, but that's what it came down to. Both times he'd met the Doctor previously, during the Cyberman invasion and the battle that had eventually left the alien stranded on this world, there'd been something there. A spark, a zest, something that just wasn't there now. There was dullness in the eyes and a dourness in his expression that Pete knew wasn't due only to being marooned in one place and time.

What it came down to was that the Doctor, ultimately, wanted to be found.

Of course, Pete was prepared to rethink that, after they got into the house and Jackie smacked the Doctor on the side of the head with a wooden spoon.

The Doctor winced and spun around, looking like he could kill her. "What the hell was that for?"

Jackie waved the spoon in his face. "That's for worrying me. And I ought to give you another one for causing trouble, but now you'll see it coming. Now get in there and pretend to eat dinner, before I do something Pete won't approve of." She pointed over the Doctor's shoulder with the spoon, letting him know that he was dismissed.

When he saw the look of anger flash in the Doctor's dark brown eyes, Pete almost stepped between them.

Pointing a finger at Jackie, the alien houseguest seethed for a moment. "You. You, Jackie Tyler, are going to be the death of me. I am nine hundred and eighty nine and a quarter years old, and I don't need some bleached-out, over-baked human-ape LUNATIC telling me when to eat and when to sleep!"

When Jackie wound up to hit him with the spoon again, Pete did intervene. He grabbed her wrist and slid the weapon of choice out of her hand anyway. Jackie yanked her hand out of his, though. "Yeah, well, if you actually did that stuff for yourself, I wouldn't HAVE to tell you! If you're so bloody old and brilliant, why don't you start acting like it? We've all had to get on with life, mate. Me, Mickey, even Pete. Everybody, that is, except for you! And why is that? Why is it that you're allowed to—to wallow like this? But the rest of us have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going? Tell me that!"

One finger was still pointing accusingly at Jackie and the Doctor was actually shaking, his jaw was clenched so hard. That was when Pete stepped between them, raising both hands. "Ok, everybody. Lets just take a moment…"

Without a second thought, The Doctor pushed Pete's hand out of his face and shot up the staircase.

Pete barely had enough time to grab both of Jackie's arms to keep her from flying up there after him. It'd be very tedious to clean up all the blood after they killed each other, fighting it out like the Calico Cat and the Cheshire Dog. Jackie leaned over his arm, and he almost lost hold of her. "Just stay up there! Don't come down, you…you ALIEN!"

Shushing her, Pete pulled her away from the steps. "Just let him go, Jacks. You're overdoing it again. Don't get yourself worked up."

That was enough to get her to at least stand down. Unfortunately, it also started her crying. Not sure what to do, he pressed her head to his chest and let her pour out months of built up emotion. He comforted the woman who was and wasn't his wife, wondering where all of this was going.

XYZ

Rose was seeing double every time she tried to look at the contents of the box until her second cup of coffee. She'd become addicted in the last few months—so much so that she could no longer remember the taste of her mother's comforting cups of tea. There was just too much to do and not enough hours in the day to do it in. Suddenly she understood all the Doctor's griping about how much humans slept.

Ianto said it often enough, and she was beginning to concur—she was probably suffering from exhaustion. But what could she do, really? There was no choice but to keep plugging along until she had an answer, even if that answer was that it couldn't be done. And if that was the case, she was going to have her hands full being the Doctor and training these people to be the Doctor for a world that seemed to need him more than most others.

No rest for the wicked, she supposed.

She set the third cup down on the cluttered desk and pulled out the first object, a gilded metal box with ornate feet packed in cotton wool. Unwrapping it, she regarded it with the same initial findings the team had made the day before. It was almost certainly alien, they'd found it too far down for it to be of modern construction, but the detail work was far too fine for a craftsman to have made by hand.

Placing it on the desk, she started in on the other items, grabbing a strange control of some kind—it looked more technological than artistic in nature, the black material felt like some sort of plastic. She wondered what it controlled. Possibly alien televisions and stereos.

Sometimes it would be like that—something she'd think was grand and fascinating, and the Doctor would inform her drolly that it was nothing more than an alien toothbrush. Still—until she knew for certain otherwise, everything could be something.

Next was the four carved wooden boxes about the size of Rubix cubes. Maybe that's what they were—party games from the future. Who knew? Like the controller and the box, she'd have to spend hours upon hours attempting to match them up to something in the ship's library, or to something already on the ship. Not that that would tell her the purpose of the thing in every case, but it was more than what Torchwood had to go on right now.

Last she removed the thing that had sparked her initial interest in the case—the cylinder. It was made of some dark metal with gold-ish detail work laid overtop. The seal was kind of brass looking with shiny silver inlay. It looked like it should open—there was a hinge on the end opposite the seal, but she couldn't figure it out. Perhaps there was some key, or a latch—but she couldn't find it.

Sitting back in the chair, she turned it over in her hands, wondering what to make of it.

Of course, the Doctor would know. Hell, for all she knew, he had one just like it somewhere on the ship to hold pencils. There really was only one way to find out though.

Leaving the rest of it, since she was entirely unsure as to its importance, she grabbed the cylinder and went back into the TARDIS, letting the door clack shut behind her. Please let it be something, she wanted to beg whatever force controlled and shaped the universe, as she dashed to the library.

And if it was going to be something, please let her be able to understand what it was, and what it did.

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

Pete was pretty sure he was going to get killed, being out there on the roof like that. The things he did to appease his pregnant wife (who would probably kill him if he didn't do this—so death was pretty much inevitable in his case). "Jackie saved you some food," Pete muttered as he crouched down next to the Doctor.

For his part, the Doctor didn't look up from whatever mess of wires and metal he was fiddling with intently. "Good for her."

Putting a hand behind him to be sure he didn't slide off the roof and to his untimely death, Pete tried to find a comfortable position. He had a feeling he was going to be up here for quite some time. He looked out into the darkness, fixing his eyes on the lights at the far end of the grounds. There was far too much lawn. The amount of open space had always bothered him. "What's that?"

Pulling the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, the Doctor made a few adjustments to the device. "What's it look like?"

Squinting, Pete looked it over. "A toaster?"

"Congratulations. It is a toaster. Or it started out as. Now it's…" The Doctor scratched his chin and sighed in a self-depreciating manner. "Ok, it's a toaster. But it also picks up television signals from the near future." Frowning, he pulled his arm back and pitched it off the roof. "It's useless."

This was going so well. Why did Jackie think he was capable of handling this? Well, it wasn't exactly like he wanted her climbing out here on the roof to talk to a raving mad Time Lord. And she'd do it, if he gave her half a chance.

The hand that wasn't holding onto the roof for dear life clutched at what was left of Pete's hair. "Alright. What do you want?"

Both of the Doctor's eyebrows shot upward and he looked at Pete as though he were mad. "What do I want? I want a fully functional trans-temporal emissions retainer. I want a pony. I want--" his teeth ground for a moment and his nose flared. "Look. I didn't ask for Jackie to make me her pet project. I didn't ask for—I don't know why she's being so nice. This is my fault, every last bit of it, and it'd be easier if she just weren't so damned nice all the time. The evil witch."

Pete had to clench his jaw muscles to keep from smiling. "She's not doing it to spite you."

"Well, she should be."

Again, Pete was left without a response. The Doctor certainly knew how to drop those conversation stoppers, didn't he?

Fingers listlessly twisting knobs on the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor stared out into nothing. "It would be easier if she did. There used to be a few constants in the universe. The TARDIS has a fifty-five percent chance of landing where and when I want her to, Mickey's an idiot, and Jackie Tyler hates every fibre of my being. That was good. I understood that. I kidnapped her daughter for an entire year, the disdain thing was completely understood. And I didn't like her back. I mean look at her—she's completely nuts."

Pete thought he sounded a bit wistful. "You know, Jackie has her own things to deal with right now."

And that was that—the Doctor went from semi-nostalgic back to dark. "I sent her away so this wouldn't happen. But I should have known she wouldn't listen. She never listens. Listened. Never. All because she—she felt the way she did about me. I never asked her for that. I never encouraged that. I wouldn't. I know better—human life spans being what they are. She'd grow bored with me and want normal human things like houses with windows, and I'd still be trying to make the chameleon circuit work, or getting caught up in conspiracies. I thought she hated this me. I thought after I regenerated, that'd be it. No more Rose Tyler. She'd be tucked safe at home with her insane mother, doing the things that humans do…"

The Doctor sighed. "I mean, I'd just sent her home! I locked the TARDIS door, and I sent her back to her mother. Did she stay there? No. She had to—to save me. Absorb the Vortex, and destroy the Daleks and burn like the sun… and somehow, I thought that she'd be smart enough after that to hate the new me and stay home. But then she says it's ok. And I wanted to say, no it's not, Rose Tyler. It isn't OK and this new me doesn't like you any more…but I didn't. I didn't do it when I had the chance. Now look. Look at what I've done. Because I--"

Because you what? Pete wanted to ask. Because you cared for her more than you should have? That's why you're on a roof, destroying toasters? Sometimes, it seemed as if all the sense had gone out of the world.

Putting the sonic screwdriver back in his pocket, the Doctor looked at his hands for a moment. "Now, here I sit. A Time Lord without a time machine. And she's there. Alone." He looked up at the stars that were so foreign to him, searching for answers. "It won't be long now." His voice was just a whisper. "I don't know the difference of how quickly time moves between that world and this. But I can't imagine it'll be much longer. The TARDIS will die, and that last piece of my home world will be gone. It'll be like the Time Lords never existed."

Untucking his legs from beneath him, the Doctor leaned back, laying on the inclined roof, threading his fingers beneath his head. "What's gonna happen after that? Who's going to watch things and fix things that're broken? Is it arrogant to wonder what's going to happen? Well, I guess if I was worried about that, I really shouldn't have destroyed my home world, huh?"

Ok. That was something Pete didn't know. Their house guest had been extremely reticent on the details of his life. Usually things only came out when he was in a row with Jackie, or in a particularly good mood.

Pete let it go for a moment, wondering where to go after that little gem of information. The Doctor relieved him of the burden of having to think up something clever, however, when he looked up at the other man with a manic grin. "Nice chat, ya? We'll have to do it again some time." Slapping Pete's leg, he sprung to his feet and clambered up the roof and down the other side, leaving the former head of Vitex scratching his head with one hand and clutching onto a shingle for dear life with the other.

XYZ

Ianto remained firmly planted in font of the cupboard door, hands clasped in front of him, the picture of composure. "I'm sorry, sir. You can't go in there. I can call the director, and she can come out, but no one is allowed in there without her expressed permission."

The other man sighed. "Look, ya fuckin' teaboy. Just open the damned door."

Impassive, Ianto remained where he was. "My duties for Torchwood are varied, Mr. Harper. That being said, I do have permission to use deadly force, if necessary, to prevent you from entering the Director's office uninvited."

"DOCTOR Harper," the man corrected. "Who the hell turns a broom cupboard into an office? God, and I thought Cardiff was a joke. You people are just insane." He turned around in defeat. "Damned teaboy," he muttered as he skulked away.

The second he was sure Doctor Harper wouldn't charge him or shoot him, Ianto reached into his pocket and removed his mobile, pressing number two on the memory dial. "Yes. They're here. I've already had an Owen Harper requesting access."

He listened to the instructions, and called Sewell up from what was left of research and development (the equipment had been used by the Cybermen for scrap, and they were trying to rebuild from the ground up) to see what could be determined before the turf war began. Ms. Tyler had informed him that she'd be out in a minute, with another piece of the puzzle. Torchwood Three was NOT to know about the seventh item that was no longer on her desk, if they didn't already know.

Going back into the small room to collect the six remaining objects, he shook his head. It hadn't sounded like Rose Tyler at all, really. The cold tone that issued orders in rapid fire had let up. There'd been something akin to curiosity in there, and dare he say—hope.

He had no opinion of Rose Tyler. Well, he did, but it was a Gordian knot of different coloured threads, each one part of a different picture. They'd listened to her in those early days because she seemed to have more insight into just how the universe worked than Yvonne Hartman did—and look what she had brought down upon them? Ianto couldn't say he'd come to terms to what she'd done to Lisa, but he understood, now that his grief was lessening. He tended to place the blame on Yvonne Hartman, for setting those events into motion, than upon Rose, who'd spent the last half a year just trying to keep this world from falling to some other alien threat.

Rose Tyler was more defensive minded than Yvonne had been. Yvonne had been about tampering and discovering and forging bold new paths. Rose had already seen where those roads lead. That much was evident by the dying blue box that she called her home and her own grief for the man in the pinstripe suit that she'd elevated, at least in their eyes, to something akin to a god.

And so he stuck with her, with the pathetic excuse of a London branch, which resembled nothing of its former glory. Torchwood wasn't a pretty place, now days. But it was a more honest place to work. It lacked polish, and for now, it suited him. A spit-shine had become synonymous in his mind with dishonesty, with hiding things.

Ianto knew next to nothing about Rose Tyler, other than she'd travelled with the Doctor, and had been separated from both him and her family, and she felt the world needed him far more than it needed her so intensely that the duel focuses of her existence were preparing Torchwood to BE the Doctor, and looking for a way to bring back the Doctor.

It seemed as fruitless as his attempts to save Lisa, and she probably needed someone to save her from herself, just as she'd saved him from spiralling into obsession. Still, he did as she asked, always. At a mere twenty years old, the girl had taken hold of Torchwood, and wasn't going to let it go. They'd be prying control out of her cold dead hands. For some reason, this impressed Ianto deeply.

When he almost had the items repacked for Sewell to do the worlds fastest analysis on, Rose stepped out of the police box, something thoughtful moving behind her eyes. He saw that she'd put on her war paint—hair pulled into a tight bun at the base of her neck, probably to hide a half a year worth of split ends, makeup, and a change of shoes. They were black Doc Martins, still not traditional office attire, but a tad more formal than shoes named after a basketball player.

She was still in the jeans and short-sleeved black button-down shirt but Rose Tyler was fully ready to do battle with this mysterious head of Torchwood Three.

Ianto carefully wrapped the ornate box, placing it inside the wooden crate. "Miss."

Rose nodded to him, closing the door quietly behind her. "I have something to show you, Ianto. And maybe you'll have some thoughts." She gestured for him to move the box, which he slid to the far corner of the desk. She placed a bundle of a strange purple fabric that was slippery like silk but textured like velvet on the table and unwrapped something.

Leaning over, Ianto inspected the objects. "I don't understand."

Rose nodded. "I know. I found it with his stuff."

Looking to her for permission, Ianto picked both items up. "They're identical."

She watched him turn them over in his hands in fascination. "Down to the scratch on the seal. The only difference is that the one we found looks like it's been in the ground for like five thousand years."

Putting both of them back on the cloth, Ianto took a step back, his face screwed in concentration. "Is it possible they're just part of a set, or that the scratch is somehow part of the design—some need to replicate everything, even the imperfections?"

Shrugging, Rose stared at the cylinders, lost in thought. "Anything's possible, Ianto. It's possible that thing is just some space debris from the Time War. But if that's possible, it's also possible that these are the same exact object."

It took Ianto a moment to get his head around that one. "Torchwood Three definitely can't get their hands on this."

She covered them again with the cloth and gathered them into her arms. "They're going back into the TARDIS for safe keeping. Because if they are the same exact object… it means that this canister is going to be making a trip to the distant past, at some point in the future. Which means there's still hope. It's also just the sort of clue I'd leave for myself. Certainly a new twist on the whole Bad Wolf breadcrumb trail."

Giving no further details about Bad Wolf, she just bundled everything a bit tighter and did something he wasn't sure he'd ever seen her do—smile. "I may not have all the pieces of the puzzle. But I think I've got all those flat edges along the outside. Time ta start working on the middle."

A strange analogy to be sure, but he shared the sentiment. "You'd better put that away, before we begin round two of the Cardiff standoff."

XYZ

As she was getting out her key, there was a knock at the door and the researcher Ianto had called for identified himself. "Tell him to be careful with the box—but if he can get it open to let me know immediately. I need to see what's inside."

The door creaked open just as she slid the key into the lock on the front door. She yanked it back out again when she heard Ianto pull out his gun. Spinning around to see what was happening, she found his six foot frame firmly planted between herself and the danger. "I'm authorized to use deadly force on anyone not invited into the director's office."

She heard the hammer being pulled back on a gun about ten feet away. "Sure, you could do that. But I don't think you want to."

Grabbing Ianto's arm, Rose almost couldn't breathe. It was surreal—maybe she was already dead, the whole thing having broken out in to a bloody shoot out, and she just wasn't aware of it. "Stand down," she ordered, stepping from behind her assistant. "Jack," she breathed.

A hand pushed on Sewell's back, sending him flying into the desk and away from the figure with the gun, revealing a face from her past.

Sewell fixed his glasses upon his face, stepping toward the wall. He was a chubby, balding man, not to mention red-faced and flustered. Rose supposed all of this was too much for him. It was only a brief, flittering thought that went away at the sight of her counterpart. "Jack Harkness?" she asked, almost unsure of herself.

He looked just as gobsmacked. Gun still aimed forward (now pointed uncomfortably at her, she might add), his jaw creaked up and down a few times. He blinked in some totally off pattern, making him look like an animatronic figure gone out of control. "Rose? Rose Tyler?" Lowering the gun, he fixed his attention on the blue box behind her. "Rose."

Rose waited until Ianto had holstered his own weapon before taking a tentative step forward. "You—how?"

Jack remained firmly planted where he was, seeming to be unsure if it was all a hallucination or not. "I could ask you the same. I thought you were dead."

"I thought YOU were dead!"

Slowly, simultaneous grins pulled back on both sets of lips. Putting the purple bundle on the desk, Rose clambered over the chair and past Sewell.

Jack kicked the rubbish box out of the way and grabbed hold of her, swinging her just as much as the narrow 'office' would permit. "Rose Tyler," Jack laughed, kissing her on the top of the head.

She wasn't nearly so chaste. The second he put her back on the ground, she grabbed his neck and pulled his head towards her, kissing him deeply, as if she were dying of thirst and he was the last source of replenishment on the face of the Earth. She only pulled away when she was out of breath, and even then she kept hold of him to make sure he wasn't a dream or a conjuring of her sleep-deprived and slightly insane mind. "Jack Harkness. What the hell are you doing here?"

With a quick squeeze, he let go of her, taking a step back to look her over. "I could ask you the same thing. I think we're fighting over the same artifact." She gave him no confirmation. "The one with the seal of Rassilon."

With that, the breath caught in her chest, and she knew it was coming. Her only hope was to get out of sight before it happened. "Grab that," she whispered, pointing to the bundle on the desk. "Ianto—get a full workup on this other stuff. Jack… step into my office." Walking back to the door, she opened it and stepped inside, the leaned against the railing next to the ramp, looking down at her shoes.

The moment the door clicked closed behind Jack, it erupted from her chest, one large, painful sob followed by stifled cries that she tried to swallow back down. She almost managed it, too, until Jack put his arms around her, enveloping her in comfort she knew she didn't deserve.

Too weak to stop herself, she buried her face in his chest and allowed herself to be suffocated by it all.

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

When Jack Harkness reappeared some time later at the TARDIS door, Ianto Jones was waiting for him. The younger man was sitting in the battered swivel chair, fingers laced casually in front of him with his hands resting on the desk. "And where is Miss Tyler, Sir?"

Jack wanted to grin, laugh it off and use his well-known charms to disarm the personal assistant, but it suddenly seemed like too much effort. And the young man was genuinely concerned for Rose, which she needed right now. "Sleeping. I take it she doesn't do a lot of that?"

Rising from the chair, Ianto straightened his jacket. "Not nearly enough, Sir."

Shaking his head sadly, the former Time Agent looked back to the TARDIS door. "Can you make sure she's not disturbed then?" he grinned, unable to help himself. "I think I tuckered her out pretty good."

Ianto nodded once, letting Jack know he understood. "I feel it's only fair to inform you, Sir. That if you hurt her, I'll retroactively shoot you for coming into the office without permission."

All of the humour left Jack's face. The smile fell and he clenched his hands a few times before he could trust himself to speak. "And I'd let you. That girl in there…that girl in there is—well, she's Rose Tyler. And if that doesn't tell you something right there, then I don't know what does."

Jack's largest regret was that he didn't figure it out sooner. That he wasn't down to London in a shot, when he'd heard of the involvement of a certain Time Lord in the events Londoners had come to term 'Doomsday.' He'd had his own problems to deal with, but once everything was settled, he should have come down here. He should have seen for himself what was happening with the London office, instead of playing games of subterfuge. It didn't matter that he'd had more shit piled up on top of that—the thing with Susie, training Gwen, all of it. He should have taken the time.

How much could he have spared her?

Ianto Jones smiled, something that never moved beyond his lips. "That she is, Sir. We've grown quite fond of her these last few months."

And the Doctor…

Talk about a long journey coming to an abrupt end. He'd waited around Cardiff for over a hundred years for his chance to find out what the hell had happened to him. Now his chance was gone, maybe forever. He didn't know what the cylinders with the identical seals meant, and he certainly didn't dare to dash Rose's hopes as to the origin of the older specimen, but he was almost afraid to be hopeful.

He touched the assistant on the arm, giving him a quick, reaffirming squeeze. "I'm going to go call off the Cardiff wolf pack. They're probably terrorizing your development people right about now. When she wakes up, I want you to make sure she eats something healthy—no coffee. Tell her I'm not talking to her until she's eaten." Jack shook his head again. "She's almost as obsessive as Him. I'm leaving it to you to make sure she doesn't go down that road any further."

With that, he left the other man to keep guard. He was sure he'd set off a ton of mixed signals, and truthfully, he was getting enough from the other party involved, but it wasn't anything Jack would be able to follow up on (mixed signals were the sexual equivalent of throwing down a challenge, he'd learned). Rose needed him right now.

It was…nice to be needed. He hated the circumstances, sure. But it had been so long since anyone had wanted him around, or needed him or his care. It made him remember other times, back when he was part of something.

XYZ

So it was going to be one of 'those' days, Jackie thought, as the Doctor bounded down the attic steps before she could call up to him. He stopped right in front of her, grabbed her arms, slapped a peck on her cheek, and continued down the hall to the next flight of steps with energy she wished she could bottle and sell.

Well, ok, it might not be one of 'those' days, he'd actually come down from the attic on his own, but she was, in general, wary of his cheerfulness. She'd begun to notice a pattern of a dark undercurrent to it a good bit of the time, and again she wondered why her daughter would love a man like that so much.

Pete had told her what the Doctor had said, regarding destroying his planet. She'd always known he was dangerous and not safe for her daughter, but suddenly she had a whole new context that she didn't have before, much less want or need.

Slowly following him down the hall, she ran her hand along the oak panelling. It was more than she ever imagined when she'd been cutting hair to make ends meet. She'd also give it all up to know her daughter was alright.

Then she looked down at her stomach. Maybe not all of it. The house, the cars, but not Pete or the baby.

Why did everything in life have to come with such a huge tradeoff? Why did everything seem to come at a terrible price?

Perhaps, from that point of view, she could sympathise with the Doctor. He hadn't been sucked into the Void, no. But he hadn't asked to be saved. And he had lost Rose too. That she could accept. Pete had told her of the ship, and his worries for that silly blue box, and suddenly she began to understand all of his bizarre behaviour for all of these months.

She'd lost her home, but had found another with Pete. She'd lost her old life, but she'd gained so much more here. What did he have?

It was then that she came to a decision. She probably should discuss it with Pete, but he'd given her pretty much free reign in regards to the Doctor.

Coming into the kitchen, she saw him at the window with his mixing bowl and spoon. Instead of a huge tablespoon as she was accustomed to him using, he had a wooden stirring spoon, and he was having at it like a small child sitting in front of the cartoons on a Saturday morning.

When he was like that, she could almost see what Rose had gone for in him. Almost.

He was reading again, this time a thick novel that he appeared to be just over half-way through. She had no doubt he'd only started it this morning. Maybe she should let him finish it, before she told him of her decision.

Taking her tea from Elise, she pulled a chair away from the table and gingerly sat down. "We need to talk about something."

Taking a sip, she waited for him to look up. No time like the present, she supposed, to tell him she was kicking him out.

XYZ

Rose woke alone. It wasn't surprising, that was her normal state of being. What was odd to her was that she was in an actual bed. That hadn't happened since…well, for ages, really.

It felt nice. Nicer than she could imagine. Not to mention the silk sheets, the soft pillows…

This wasn't her room.

Sitting up, she pulled the sheet around her naked body to keep out the chill that seemed to be running through her. Was this Jack's old room?

Looking around her, she determined that no, no it wasn't. The familiar infinity symbol that had started off this whole weird chain of events on several of the objects in the room ruled that out. Oh this was just wrong. She'd never seen the inside of the Doctor's room—hadn't even known he kept a bed. Well, it seemed to figure that he'd have a room—he needed some place to keep his clothes, after all. But a bed? Well, everybody needed a place to pass out now and again. Why not a bed with bright orange sheets done in silk?

And she'd slept with Jack here. Yeah. New levels of wrongness that she couldn't even begin to fathom.

Rubbing the side of her head, she looked at her watch. According to the ticking hands on the mouse's face, she'd only been asleep for about four hours. Good. She was wasting daylight on this Rassilon thing. Four hours was as good as a night's sleep in some places, which meant she probably didn't need to bother with trying tonight, so she could probably make it about thirty-six hours or so before she'd pass out again.

Jack probably did that on purpose.

Not that she'd put up too much of a struggle when he'd finally lifted her tear-stained face with both hands and kissed her deeply, or when his hand tore the hair band out of her frazzled locks. If anything she'd only encouraged him further by moving his hands exactly where she'd wanted.

Flopping back onto the bed, she pulled one of the pillows to her. It still smelled like him. Like the Doctor, not Jack. She couldn't remember what Jack smelled like, even now. Her every sensory memory of him was relegated to the feeling of his arms around her, and his breath next to her ear as he told her it was going to be alright, some how, some way.

It had been the first time in months she'd felt anything other than the chill that had overtaken her after she'd walked away from that wall—it seemed her life oscillated between numbness and pain, and when the pain came, it was all she could do to find something else to occupy herself, something else to think about. Anything to get her through the moment, then through the day. Anything to see to it that life went on.

Because, when she felt like that, she wasn't sure that it would.

When Jack had divested her of her clothes and promised to make it alright, even if just for a moment…that was the first time she believed that it could be. Oh she had hope that the Rassilon thing would pan out. She had to have hope in something, anything, be it Bad Wolf or the Doctor, or some pretentious bastard named Rassilon that brought the Time Lords out of the dark ages. But with Jack—that was the first time she actually believed that the coldness inside of her would stop—mostly because he had followed through.

Hugging the Doctor's pillow to her chest, she looked up at the ceiling with a smile. Yes. Jack had kept his promise. She'd certainly not felt frosty, when he was done with her. Anything but.

She could tell by the look in his eyes that he'd also been through hell since they'd last seen each other. But he'd given to her something that she'd needed. Some small bit of what it meant to be human. And he'd done it despite his own worries. She only hoped that she could give some small measure of that back to him, because, really, he was too good of a friend.

Rose didn't deserve him, and she knew that.

After a few steadying breaths, Rose got up, looking around again at the space that she couldn't describe. It was eclectic to be sure—paisley scarves, cricket bats, ugly hats and uglier coats littered various pieces of furniture. Books were stacked hip deep in most of the corners, the desk was cluttered beyond anything resembling usability, and the wooden thing she supposed was a dresser was full up with a million odd items—a wig, pomade, an abacus, into which was jammed several small bottles of who knew what, several books, salt and pepper shakers, a bundled up scarf and a box.

Almost tripping over the sheet, Rose clambered over to the dresser, picking the ornate box up, turning it over and over. She recognised this. Why did she recognise this?

It was in that box of artifacts. Older, more beat up, but the same swirling inlay patterns. Oh this was something. This was definitely something. Unless this was standard issue Time Lord brick-a-brack—it HAD to mean something.

Opening it, she found nothing. The red velvet-like interior was a tad dusty, which was weird for a closed box, but that was it.

Gathering up the loose bits of sheet at her ankles, she clutched the box to her chest and dashed through the ship, desperate to find Jack.

XYZ

Ianto was used to Rose Tyler changing in front of him. It wasn't exactly a morning routine, but it happened often enough that he was aware of the protocol of debriefing her whilst she, well, debriefed.

That being said, he'd never seen her quite so… unclothed outside of the TARDIS.

He'd snapped awake instantly upon the ship's door being opened. And there she was, wrapped in an orange silk cloth, her shoulders bare, hair disheveled, something clutched to her chest, and a look of wide-eyed wonder about her that he'd never seen. Whatever his feelings for the head of the Cardiff branch, he would not deny the man's effect on Rose.

Sitting forward in her chair, he tugged downward on his jacket, trying to smooth out the wrinkles. "Miss."

Rose grinned. "Where's Captain Harkness?"

Ianto looked at his watch. "I believe he said he was going for a midnight snack. He's been in the lab most of the day, supervising results." He pulled out his phone. "I'm under orders to be sure you're fed properly before he returns."

Looking at her watch, Rose winced. "It's not noon, is it, Ianto?"

"No, Miss. A little after midnight."

One hand wrapped around her, as if she'd just noticed her state of undress. "And I look like a raving lunatic, don't I, Ianto?"

Smiling tightly, he pressed a number on his speed dial. "You needed the rest, Miss. Captain Harkness has informed me that he'd be more than willing to continue working on the problem at hand, once you are fed and…dressed." He turned away from her, placing a food order. Completing his business, he faced her again. "You'll have plenty of time to change, before it gets here." He practically shooed her away.

Fortunately, she wasn't angry. She graced him with one of those smiles—the ones that were terribly rare, but could still make men march off to their deaths simply for her favour. Her tongue touched her teeth, eyes sparkling, and Ianto was almost willing to forgive her for what had become of Lisa. "I'm a fright. I know. But tell Jack—I found another one. Another…duplicate article."

Opening the TARDIS door she slid back behind it. "And thank you, Ianto."

Nodding, he maintained the smile until she retreated completely and the door closed behind her. Then he went back to work.

XYZ 

Sticking his finger beneath his collar, the Doctor tugged on it, wincing in the late spring heat. "I hate ties."

Taking his eyes off the road for just a second, Pete glanced at the car's other occupant. "You wear ties almost every day."

Looking out the window, the Doctor slouched in his seat a bit, making his unhappiness known. "This is different. This is for real."

As he often had to when the Doctor was around, Pete bit back a snarky smile. Stopping at a light, he contemplated this turn of events. He had absolutely no idea how Jackie had done it. But here he was, coming to work for Torchwood, moderately willingly. "You can take it off after the meet and greet." Nine hundred and some-odd years old, and he had all the composure of a seventeen-year-old going to his first day at a food service job.

Fiddling with the knot listlessly, the Doctor loosened and tightened the thing repeatedly, the rest of the way to the office. "I'm too old for this. I was only three hundred the last time I had to do this. I could take the trauma of paper work a lot better. It still scarred me for life, but I could at least do it. This—I can't do. What if someone asks where I'm from? I'll just blurt out, 'Oh you've never heard of it, because even though it was a crossroads between dimensions, it's been blown up?' Y'know? Or they start asking what I like on my pizza, and I tell them krasnit snails and barbeque sauce? I mean—it's the truth, but they don't know a kransit snail from a Selbasan mollusk, which you cannot put on pizza, because the oils in meat mix with the tomato sauce and basically liquefies your internal organs in about fifteen minutes. Then I'll say something like that, and they'll look at me oddly, because I was much better at keeping my mouth shut when I was only three hundred. But, see, that was before the Time Lords decided to retract the whole banishment thing and started making me do their dirty work, so I got a little mouthy after that, as you can imagine. Now I just can't stop…"

The car came to a halt in an underground spot near a big metal door. "It's very easy to stop. Just put you lips together and don't say anything." God. The things he did for Jackie. His perfect specimen of all the qualities of Jackie he'd come to love, without the things that had pulled them apart over the years. He had conflicted feelings about that. He wasn't sure they'd ever be resolved. She was Jackie but…not. She was a Jackie who trusted him, who wanted him around. Who actually talked to him…

Taking the key out of the ignition, he opened the car door. "Now remember. Consultant. Nothing terribly difficult. Nothing about mollusks and such. In fact, if anybody asks, you have a seafood allergy."

The Doctor sighed, getting out of the two-door midlife crisis car. "Rassilon's breath. I can't believe Jackie's making me pay rent. What did I tell you? Evil."

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

Jack looked over the objects Rose had presented him with upon his return to the ship. They hadn't actually worked on this at all this morning, when he'd come barging into her 'office,' holding one of her employees at gunpoint. She'd brought him into the TARDIS, presumably to show him the artifacts that weren't on her desk, but had instead promptly broken down at the sight of him.

So he'd let her cry, held her and whispered in her ear that everything'd be ok. He wasn't sure how, yet. But both of them were stuck in this time, alone, they were better off together than by themselves. Hell—Torchwood, and thereby the defense of the Earth, was better off with them working together, instead of continuing on alone, as they had been.

If the Doctor was really gone, if what she'd told him, as her sobs had begun to break up, was true… then they really didn't have anything left but each other. So he'd be there for her, whether she wanted him to be, or not.

It had lead to mutual confessions. Rose told him of the things she'd had to do, since the Doctor had left. She hadn't know what else what to do, with the Doctor gone, and no one else to defend the Earth. Jack had whispered words of absolution—she'd done what she felt she'd had to. He'd explained how he'd gotten back to Cardiff, how he'd missed his mark by over a hundred years, and had spent all that time waiting for the Doctor.

She'd kissed him so tenderly then, taking his head between her hands and pressing her lips so softly to his, telling him how sorry she was that his eyes looked as lonely as she felt, and she didn't wish that upon anyone.

It had lead to…other things. Repeatedly.

Jack had told her that he'd seen so much in his many years of lonely, immortal existence, but he knew, from her own haunted look that she'd had her own horrors this last half a year since the battle at Canary Wharf. She'd spoke of cleaning up after the Cybermen disaster, of what had become of the survivors.

Taking comfort in each other seemed to be not only the right thing to do, but the only thing left, in the circumstances. There was no one else to understand what both of them had lost. Their Doctor was in another universe, trapped there, apparently forever. Apparently the Doctor's people could bridge the gap between infinite parallel dimensions, but with all of them gone, that pathway was closed, and so Rose was shut off from the Doctor, and her family, and Jack had lost his opportunity for answers.

Eventually, due to their earnestness, it all became a blur, but at some point he'd carried her to the nearest room that looked like a bedroom. It wasn't until after that he'd realised just whose room it must have been. He'd have felt bad about that, if he'd been capable of feeling such things any more. He'd had his own trials over the years that had left him scarred. It reminded him of how long it had been since he'd had this kind of human contact. They'd both needed it, and maybe later, if his own heart started beating again, he'd feel strange about where they'd ended up. Maybe.

And so, here they were in the library, staring at two sets of twin artifacts sitting in the centre an oversized dark wood table, two lonely people trying to keep the world from going to pot in the absence of the person they probably loved most. Looking at objects baring symbols of his home world, wondering what it all meant.

Pressing his hands to the smooth, over-waxed table top, Jack leaned forward, looking the items over, contemplating their options. "Maybe we should search for the other items somewhere in the ship."

Rose's hand ran through her suddenly shorter wet hair. He suspected she'd done a hack-n-slash on it when she was getting cleaned up. She'd done a good job, though. Even though it wasn't dry or styled, he could see that it was a decent cut, just above the collar, but layered. It made her face look longer, perhaps more mature. When he'd first seen her in that broom cupboard, she'd looked like a dichotomous mess—hard eyes, but round innocent cheeks. Casual clothes and unkempt hair set against a dead serious nature.

Somehow, Jack couldn't say the new style was more like the fun and flirty Rose he had met all those years ago, on his first swing through the nineteen forties. It was, perhaps, a bit more indicative of who she'd become, while still being a tiny reminder of that iridescence he'd come to love about her.

He seemed to recall her mentioning, ages ago, that her mother did hair. She must have picked up a thing or two, and good on her for being brave enough to take a pair of shears to her own head.

After a few moments, Rose looked up at him, somewhat dazed, as though she'd been lost in thought. "What? Yeah. I guess we could. At least check all the obvious places. But I don't want to waste time on it. We could spend the rest of our lives searching the ship, for something that could be, for all we know, in his pocket, in the other universe."

There was a sort of simplistic sensibility about the statement that impressed upon him how tough life had been on her these last months, and how much she had changed. It was a very practical assessment of their time and manpower resources. Somewhere along the way, Rose had become quite adept at making judgments and calling shots. It made him proud as all hell of her, but it also caused a bit of sadness to creep in, mostly due to the circumstances. While she'd always struck him as someone capable of rising to the occasion, it was terribly regretful that this new facet of her personality had been forged by such great hardship.

Without further thought into the matter, he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close, just wanting to feel her beside him. "Agreed. But it's worth a shot. Then when we know what we have, then we can start working on what it means."

Resting her head on his chest, she closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. "He'd know what it all means. He'd have it solved."

His other arm slid around her, holding her tight. It was about then that he realised just how little she'd mourned all of her losses. Perhaps even she didn't know how adrift she was. Another rush went through him as he placed a peck on her hairline and he breathed in the scent of her nut and vanilla shampoo—that need to protect her. She was worth fighting for, but she was also worth protecting, even if it was only from herself. The worst of the world, of darkness and of loss had already pressed itself upon her. Saving her from herself was about the only thing that he had left. "I know. We'll figure it out."

Resting his cheek on her head, he continued to stare at the table and its contents, trying to fathom what it all meant. And hoping that maybe, just maybe, she could save him too.

XYZ

After he got back from a long working lunch, Pete pulled aside his artifacts and technology section head.

Archie Wood was the kind of guy that everybody liked, which was rather unusual for an engineer. Over the years Pete had discovered that they tended to only hang out with other engineers, were incredibly particular about certain things and couldn't spell. Despite all of this, Archie had somehow possessed the mind for the job and the personality to keep a section together with the eccentric group of people under him that Torchwood tended to recruit, which was why he'd safely tucked the Doctor into a department where he could do a moderate amount of good, possibly--and hopefully while annoying the fewest number of people.

When Pete went for him, he was standing outside a row of stone grey cubicles surrounded by those hideously large tropical office plants, one hand in his pocket, the other clutched around a mug of water, grinning while a chorus of laughs came from the enclaves.

Trying not to draw attention to himself (people got so awkward around him sometimes, and he wasn't in the mood for it today), Pete waited until the laughter died down and then grabbed Archie's dark, hairy arm, dragging the short, balding but vibrant man in his late thirties away from the group.

He leaned toward the younger man to at least maintain the illusion of privacy. "How's he working out?"

Archie rubbed his forehead, thinking hard, but then cracked a smile. "John Smith? The Doctor? Doesn't fit in one iota. Productive as all hell, though. Cleared out half a dozen backlogged provinces, cataloguing what was useful and what was chaff, and that was before lunch."

Rubbing his balding pate in thought, Pete nodded. Well, it was something remotely hopeful—he'd at least have a good report to give to Jackie when he got home tonight. "Hopefully he won't cause too much trouble. But in the end, I think he'll be worth it. He is THE expert."

Nodding, Archie folded his arms over his polo shirt-clad chest. "If you don't mind me asking, sir—he's an alien, isn't he?"

Mouth opened to respond, Pete closed it again, not entirely sure how to answer. He pressed his lips together firmly, but that was about all the response he could muster. It was a blessing and a curse working with so many geniuses sometimes.

Rubbing the side of his nose, the other man looked away. "Come on, sir. He didn't need to do the required new employee physical. That means there's something we're not supposed to see. And, sir…he's just plain weird."

Casually, he slid his hands into his pockets, wondering how much or how little to say. "He's…yes. I have to warn you…he's a bit more of an…action man. You might have a bit of a job to keep him from just leaping into the middle of things."

His section head nodded. "Will do, sir."

They parted ways, then. Pete slithered back to his big office a few floors up and went back to trying to figure out how to make president understand that Torchwood wasn't an organisation prepared to deal with domestic threats, nor was it ready to take on new responsibilities of that nature.

XYZ

Jack's arms around her felt so good. Sure, she still felt weak at the display, weak for the need for affection. But she'd been so alone for so long that Rose didn't know how to feel any more. There'd never been this need with the Doctor—the need to be tough as diamonds, clear-cut and impenetrable. It had been just the two of them, and that was all that she needed—a hand to hold and a heart to be close to. Someone that understood her completely, who didn't ask of her what she was unable to give. She'd simply been herself, and there'd been no reason to be anything more, to become a machine or a symbol. She'd been Rose Tyler, he'd been the Doctor, and all had been right in the world.

Now, here she was, melting beneath the heat of someone else's gaze. It felt wrong, and she was greedy for it, all in the same instant.

She almost wished Jack hadn't torn down that wall. She wasn't sure, once she stepped outside the TARDIS, that she'd be able to go back to that, to do what she needed to do. "I feel like I'm falling apart."

Kissing her head, Jack rested his cheek against her again. "It's OK if you need to."

Swaying just a bit back and forth, she turned in his arms, sliding a hand back behind him. He began to rock with her in the uncoordinated dance of two young teenagers at an awkward school function. "If I fall apart, will I be able to put me back together again?"

Running a hand along the side of her drying hair, he gave her his best smile of reassurance. "I'll put you back together again." His lips pressed gingerly against hers. "But I don't think you're coming undone. I think you've got it pretty well together."

She leaned her head further into the hand pressed against her cheek, her eyes closed as she tried to absorb his warmth. "I don't feel like it. That's what you've done to me. In just a couple of hours. Everything—it wasn't good. But it was functional. Now I'm not sure I can function."

His lips were magic, did he know that? They brushed against hers again, and she almost believed she was a good person. She almost could forget ordering the deaths of all those people, whose only crime was being half-converted. It was almost possible to ignore the feel of the gun in her hand—warm from being pressed against Ianto's body. She could very nearly wipe away the memory of deafening noise and recoil that she wasn't expecting, that had almost knocked her clear off her feet. "Jack…stop. We—we have to do this. To work on this."

But as his mouth worked its way to her neck, sending a tingling shiver through her, she began to lose any sense of urgency towards the inexplicable objects on the table before them. If he wanted to make her forget again, who was she to stop him?

One hand closed around the top button of her shirt, and he undid the tiny thing with little effort. He was probably a man with too much practice at divesting people of clothes from all time periods and corners of the universe. "Rose—you're not falling apart," he promised, his voice something dark and soft…something she could almost believe in. "You're exhausted. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally."

Her legs almost went out from under her when his palm finally brushed against her bare breast. His strong, thick forearm caught her in the small of the back, crushing her stomach against his. "And what about you?" she asked desperately, her voice becoming a pleading whisper.

Jack's lips brushed against her ear. "Same," he muttered, sliding her shirt to the floor.

He began backing her toward the door as she began tugging on his braces. Their lips were locked again by the time they crossed the threshold of the library—or tried to. Neither of them were paying attention to where they were going at that point. Rose's bare back clipped against the doorframe and they turned so that she was now directing him. It was only another few feet before Jack's back came in contact with an oddly placed buttress in the corridor and they spun again, as if it were a game of bumper cars, but with snogging and groping.

Rose managed to tug his shirt free, leaving the dark blue button-down in their wake. "We have a problem that we need to be working on," she breathed. She'd been about to lodge some other protest, when his lips on her throat made all the air rush out of her lungs.

Eyes closed against the sensations bursting in her head, she didn't open them again until her legs backed against something short and soft and she fell backward, onto a mattress. They snapped open the moment her back brushed against the familiar silk material, but she couldn't see where she was. Jack was encompassing her entire field of vision, as he'd gone down with her, crushing her against the bed.

The Doctor's bed. Again.

His fingers slid around the button on her jeans, undoing it just as deftly as he'd undone her shirt and bra. "Do you really want me to stop?"

She sighed, her hands already working on his belt. "No." Weakness or emotional and physical exhaustion. She didn't know what it was—but she was giving in to it—for a second time. "Jack?"

"Hmm?" he groaned as he wriggled out of his trousers.

Catching her foot around the waistband of his boxers, she helped him free of those as well. "Do you think we'll ever see him again?"

Kicking her jeans away, Jack Harkness began on her knickers with a sudden impatience. "I hope so, honey." He yanked the bit of pink fabric down the length of her legs. "I hope so."

XYZ

It was a short conversation. Pete just kept repeating the same thing he'd been saying for the last two weeks on the subject of additional responsibilities for his organisation. Staring at the wood paneled walls, he searched for patterns in the wood grains, like finding images in clouds on sunny days. That was what passed for entertainment during these conversations where it was just the same thing, over and over.

He hung up, and no sooner had he turned back to the pile of papers on this desk, did the phone light up again. It was the thirteenth floor, so he knew it couldn't be good. "Yeah?" Might as well just get on with it.

Archie was on the other end, exasperated. "I think you'd better come down here, sir. He's going on and on and none of us can stop him… he's demanding the contents of the Canton lot. I told him we don't have authorisation to remove anything from storage…"

Without asking which 'he' the section head was referring to, Pete slammed the receiver into the cradle and spun his chair away from the desk. He didn't bother with the lift, he hit the stairs, and before he was even to the thirteenth floor, he heard the commotion through the metal fire doors. It was muffled, but unmistakable.

"Tell me where it is!" Definitely the Doctor, and definitely taking no prisoners.

Pushing open the door, Pete made his way to the middle of the floor, the focal point of the scuffle, then jumped between an engineer, a physicist, and the Doctor, who looked like he was about to do them both bodily harm with the wad of papers he was clutching and throttling to death with emotion.

Pete held up both hands. "Everybody!" And he meant everybody—the entire floor had poked their heads out of their cubicles to watch the display going on in the middle of the office. "Lets sort this out!"

Teeth clenched, the Doctor spun around, waving the papers at his benefactor and employer. "Where is it? Tell me where it is!"

Grabbing the papers out of his hand, Pete tried to get a good look at the province that had gotten the Doctor so fired up. Even with the photos, he was having trouble determining what had gotten the Doctor so in an uproar. "What?"

Nose flaring in fury, the Doctor pointed to a mediocre and slightly blurry photograph of an ornate brown box. "That. Right there. It's mine."

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

Rose didn't sleep nearly as long the second time—it was more of a quick doze. She woke wrapped around the Doctor's pillow, clutching it to her chest, face buried in it. It smelled like that hard water soap the Doctor used and…well, him.

Surprisingly, she wasn't alone. Jack shifted, and then wrapped an arm around her, kissing her shoulder. "What're you thinking about?"

She nuzzled her cheek against the pillow, trying to remember the feel of the Doctor's arms. They were nothing like Jack's, in either incarnation. All wire and protective clutching, first with the smell of leather, then of wool. What was he doing, out there, in that other universe? Had he found a place and a way to be the Doctor there, to save that world from itself?

Inhaling deeply, she closed her eyes, wondering what he was doing at that very moment, if he was running, if he was holding someone's hand. "Thinking about how much we still have to do," she lied. "And of how much help you're not being, if you're going to keep seducing me."

He pinched her side playfully, teasing her until she squirmed. "Seduce? Yeah. Right. Seduce. Uhh huh." Kissing her neck affectionately, he let his lips rest against her ear. "Can't seduce the willing."

Before he could distract her too badly again, she pulled her head away from him. "That's not the point. Jack…I have to get back to work. I don't know what…this is. But I have to work." It was what she had left. She had work, and holding on to the slim hope that she'd find something—some loophole, some catch that would help her get back to the Doctor. Because if she didn't have that…if she allowed herself to lie here, in his bed, staring at his stuff, sniffing his pillow while another man nibbled on her ear, she'd have to admit just how unlikely pulling off a miraculous rescue would be. And then she'd have to mourn him properly.

She wasn't sure she'd be able to function at all, if her mask slipped that far.

Those enormous barrel-like arms of her unintended lover slid around her and pulled her to his chest. "Rose—we're going to figure it out. But look at yourself, honey. Really take a good look. You aren't doing the things necessary to be a healthy, productive member of society—you're not eating, sleeping or looking after yourself. So if you need me to look after you once in a while, then I will."

Staring at the scarf on the dresser, Rose sighed. "I don't—Jack—dammit. In his room!"

When she tried to pull away, he simply shushed her and held her tighter. "I know."

Turning in his arms, she glared at him. "If you know, why did we end up here? Again!"

Kissing her cheek, he released his hold on her just a bit, letting her back away from him. "Rose, I don't know. We just did. Somehow it ended up being the nearest room. Twice. Maybe the TARDIS has some say in all of this." His cheek twitched—she wasn't sure if it was in humour or thoughtfulness. "Reminds you of him, doesn't it?"

Resting her head again on the pillow, Rose dared to look at Jack. He hadn't meant anything by this. It wasn't some affront against the Doctor—it was about something else entirely.

Her cheek brushed against the soft, slightly exotic fabric that her Doctor had chosen for his room. He had slept here—putting his head on the pillow when he was too tired to go on, and spent some time not worrying about the world. This was his haven, and she was invading it. "The way he is now. Or when I last saw him. Who knows if he's regenerated since then? The first him, I don't know. Seemed a little more… meticulous."

She looked around at the wall hangings, they didn't make sense to her, but they seemed to be a mishmash of cultures. "Yeah. It reminds me of him. Maybe more than the control room does. And I sleep there every night. And it's his room. His own space that he never showed me. I feel like I'm intruding. And I'm intruding in order to…" all the air rushed out of her lungs. "Oh Jack."

His thumb brushed her cheek gently. "Rose—he's gone."

Furious eyes met his. "Don't say--"

Jack's finger pressed to her lips, cutting her off. "Rose. He is gone. He's not here. We might be able to bring him back. But he's gone. And if being here makes you feel closer to him, or better—then it's ok. It's not like he's using this room right now anyway." To keep her from any further protest, Jack planted his lips upon hers. "He's gone. We're here. We have to go on. We can keep looking for him, but there has to be more to life than obsession." He said this as if he knew first-hand.

He paused, letting that sink in. "But believe me. I know. I can't tell you how many nights over the last hundred years I've stared at the walls, wondering what it'd be like to see him again. Now I never will. Or at least it looks like that. I may never. How's that sound? That's a bit more…hopeful." Fingers brushed hair out of her eyes. "What do you think he's doing right now?"

Staring at the shield stitched into a tapestry, the ornate gold infinity symbol in the background of a more complex design, Rose tried to imagine it. "Something spectacular." Drawing in a shaky breath, she wondered what it was like for him, on 'dry land,' as it were. "I bet he's…putting down alien invasions. Or building himself a space ship out of stuff he picked up at a boot sale. Something amazing."

Jack squeezed her tight, his eyebrows arching as he shot Rose a very serious look. "Really?" One hand trailed up her side, then back down her leg. "That's what he's doing?"

When his overly experienced fingers brushed the insides of her thighs, she squirmed, trying not to laugh at his ticklish touch. "Jack!" she swatted his hand away, but his fingers did something else that made her gasp. "Jack!"

Mercilessly, he continued, grinning like a pirate trying to torture out a confession. "Is that what he's really doing?"

Letting out a squeal, her legs bucked. "It's what he's doing!" Laughing, she tried to writhe away, but Jack wrapped his free arm around her. "He's—he's saving the Earth, and being the Doctor, and—and--" Rose gasped. "And—and—and—eating dinner with my mother!" She dissolved into helpless giggling, but it didn't make Jack stop what he was doing. If anything, it only encouraged him that much more.

XYZ

The dining room walls were green. It never bothered Pete before, but suddenly it seemed to him that dark green was an odd colour for a room that was supposed to be about food, or something. Who painted walls the same shade as over-cooked broccoli? Well—it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

"If you don't eat those peas, God help me…" Jackie pointed to the snowy cap of green vegetables stacked on a mountain of mashed potatoes, which were on the plate, next to the devastated remains of a piece of steak.

Perhaps he could have wood panelling installed. It would give him something to fixate upon during these…awkward moments. The ones where, somehow, the love of his life made him want to limp away and hide in some corner or hole, until this whole hormonal-driven rampage was over. He loved her, but sometimes…

Sometimes she could try the patience of a saint. It made him love her all the more—who else would tell a thousand-year-old lord of time to eat his veg?

The Doctor pointed his knife at her. "You'll what?"

Pete held up a hand. "Jacks…go easy on him." The Doctor had been on edge all afternoon, even after he'd ordered the whole Canton lot brought down from Cardiff. It wasn't going to be in until tomorrow morning, and he had a feeling the Doctor would die of anticipation before then.

Frowning, the alien pushed the peas into the mash, and then began covering it with the white fluffy potato mixture. "I don't need your help. I've faced Daleks and Cybermen, I'll have you know. Yeti. The Nestene Consciousness. I can handle Jackie Tyler and her Abominable Snow Peas."

Said evil nemesis tapped his plate with her fork, ignoring the blatant implications he'd made about her. "Then eat them."

Possibly just to spite her, the Doctor continued mixing his sides with distain. "I'll eat what I like."

It was quiet at the table after that. Silverware scraped against plates, strained glances frittered across the hardwood table, glasses clattering against the finish. The minutes seemed to stretch onward into infinity, until Jackie put her fork down. "Have a good day today?"

The Doctor looked at her as though she were mad. And Pete, knowing the Doctor's opinion of Jackie, knew that it probably wasn't far off from what he was actually thinking. "What do you care?"

Before Jackie could reach for her knife (whether to threaten their indefinite house guest with, or to stab through one of his hearts, Pete couldn't tell), her husband placed his hand over hers in what could be construed as an affectionate gesture.

Jackie smiled sweetly, and Pete knew they were in for trouble. Why couldn't either of them behave? All that his wife had to do was just NOT start with the Doctor. And for the alien's part, why did he insist on volleying back at her exactly what she insisted on dishing out? Didn't he know that Jackie was Jackie, and she was going to keep doing these things? To a degree, they not only equally matched, but also marginally deserved each other, if they were going to behave in such a ridiculous fashion. "I was trying to be polite, you bloody alien oaf, and ask how your day was. Now if you want to be--"

The Doctor stood up, the chair sliding away from the table as he did so. Slamming his napkin on the table, he glared at her. "If I want to be what? Now you're the regulator of my every mood? Is there any other bits of my business you'd like to be into, Jackie Tyler? I think I might still be capable of independent thought. Perhaps you'd like to get on me for that, too?"

When he stalked off, Jackie gasped, then pushed her own chair away from the table and struggled to get up. Before she could waddle after him, Pete shook his head no. "Well, he can't just storm away from the table--"

Pete put his napkin down and prepared to cut her off before she could dash upstairs after their guest. "Believe it or not, he doesn't have to listen to you."

Oh he'd just gotten on her bad side, especially if the glare she was giving him was any indication. Pointing toward the dining room door, she made some strange sound that vaguely resembled a growl. "As long as he lives here…"

He captured her hand, holding it tightly between both of his own. "Jackie, he's not your son." Kissing her hand, he squeezed it affirmingly. "I know you miss Rose."

In just a second all of the tension evaporated from her face, and it melted from anger to a long-standing sadness. "Why won't he just—Pete—he could…" sniffling, she sighed. Later, when she came to her senses, she'd blame it on hormones. Grief wouldn't have anything to do with it, of course. Tyler women didn't cry. "Everything always has to be so complicated."

XYZ

Rose's vision had blurred, she'd been staring at the ceiling so hard, thinking. "So how do we get it open?"

Almost absent-mindedly, Jack's fingers trailed down her stomach. "What open? The cylinder? I don't know. I figured we could give the geeks a crack at it; see if they can come up with anything. We were getting mild energy reading off the cubes, nothing that seemed within a normal Earth range for anything—so it's not like the Doctor picked 'em up in a junk heap or anything like that. Of course it was about then that my stomach decided to start making weird noises and I snuck out for some food…" He pushed the hair away from her neck and kissed it. "Because the only other thing I can think of, besides letting the nerds slobber all over it is to start searching the ship for a key."

Running a hand through her hair, Rose thoughtfully scratched her head. "We get back to that needle in a haystack thing again. We could be searching forever for something we don't even recognise because we have no idea what it looks like. I mean, it's not like the TARDIS key looks like, well, a key. So why should the key to the case look like a key. Assuming there's a key…"

Jack rolled onto his back and joined her in her inspection of the coffered tiles above their heads. "Ok. Key is out. But we can't get either cylinder open. We've got one locked box, another empty box."

"Which is the same locked and empty box. We think."

Hand reaching for hers, Jack squeezed tight. "There's got to be some way to confirm it for either set of artifacts. But if they are, what does it mean?"

Rose pulled the silky orange sheet up a bit further, suddenly a bit chill. "It means those things do a bit of time travelling. In the future, apparently. We just need to figure out how and why. And then make it so."

Tucking her arms under the sheet, she pulled it up to her chin. The squares on the ceiling were layered, and if you looked at them dead-on, it was tough to tell whether they were convex or recessed. Closing one eye, she stare at them, wondering if there was something they were missing. Well, besides the one person who would know what it all meant.

A firm hand squeezed her arm with reassurance. "Don't do that."

She looked up at Jack. "Huh?" Now he was inside her head.

Sliding an arm under his head, he continued staring upward. "You're thinking that the Doctor is the only one that can solve this."

Turning onto her side, she poked his arm with her finger playfully. "Immortal and psychic, are we now, Jack Harkness?" How long had it been since she'd had anyone to behave like this with? Someone to share a laugh, to lose all pretense of seriousness in the presence of. Someone to feel safe with. It felt as good as it did scary—and made her miss the Doctor just that much more.

Shooting her a sidelong glance that developed into more of a snide smile, he shook his head. "You always sigh regretfully when you're thinking about him. Listen, Rose, I'm not going to lie to you. This could mean anything. I can kinda-sorta almost fly this thing. Maybe it means I figure out how. Maybe they ARE different boxes. Just because we have a similar bunch of artifacts from a race not exactly known for leaving their toys outside in the rain, that doesn't mean we're going to get him back. I want it to mean that, just as much as you do. But we don't know. Ok? So stop with the circular logic about how the only way to get him back is for him to solve this problem. It won't get this done."

Without hesitation, Rose pecked him on the cheek. "Thank you."

He slid an arm beneath her, and she put her head on his shoulder. "That's how I know I'm old. I've suddenly become the voice of reason. I miss my care-free days of doing the first impulsive and illogical thing that sprung to mind."

Nuzzling her cheek against his shoulder, Rose closed her eyes. "It's just…when my hands aren't busy, I start thinking, y'know? And that's never done anybody any good. Every time I start thinking, I think about how impossible this is. He said it was impossible, who am I to say it's not?"

Kissing her forehead, Jack went back to staring at the ceiling as if it held some sort of answers, if only he could somehow decipher their strange codes. "You're Rose Tyler. And that's good enough for me. Besides, he's just the Doctor. It isn't like he knows everything—even if he is a, no, THE Time Lord. But, Rose—I don't think you're just doing this because you're driven. I think, deep down, you know something, or remember something, or are getting some small bit of inspiration from somewhere, even if it's just the TARDIS telling you that you should go on. Because even I would have quit a long time ago, and I have forever."

Sitting up suddenly, Rose gave a startled squeak. "Jack. Jack you're a genius, you know that. Right?" He smiled smugly, and she nudged him. "It's what I was thinking when I first found the cylinders. Somehow, the thought just frittered right out of my head when I saw you. Bad Wolf, Jack. I think it's all a sign from Bad Wolf. The boxes, the symbols…even you, being here. Bad Wolf is telling me it can be done. So if she's telling me that, she can tell me how." She frowned. "I hope."

Frowning, Jack sat up with her. "Bad Wolf? What's—that was following us around. What's Bad Wolf have to do with any of this?"

Grabbing the Doctor's pillow, Rose held it to her chest protectively. "Um…I think you'd better get comfortable. This could take a while. And I can only tell you what I can remember, what the Doctor told me later, and what I can infer. But, Jack, I have a feeling I know why you can't die."

TBC…


	7. Chapter 7

Leaning back in the jump chair, Jack coughed, trying to hold back his laughter. "Then he's running around the ship with no pants on. And I don't mean no trousers—well he wasn't wearing those. But nothing. Bare ass, no socks, no shoes, just that damned pea green sweater and what's he raving about?"

Doubling over, Rose tried to stop choking. It took her a few minutes before she could stand back up again, red-faced and gasping. "His sonic screwdriver!"

"Yes!" Jack threw both hands up in the air, victoriously. "TEN minutes of him ranting and raving about his freakin' precious 'sonic screwdriver.' And I'm trying NOT to look down. I'm just trying. And I can't do it. Because he's naked! Except for the sweater!"

Pounding on her own chest, Rose tried to work some of the coughing out. "What did you DO to him?"

Jack raised a finger triumphantly into the air. "NOTHING. I, Jack Harkness, did NOTHING! HE broke rule number… three or four of alien encounters. You were off buying earrings or something, and he was chatting up a tree and eating Krank cakes. Which are not even remotely related to Krank burgers. Krank burgers are made outta Krank sharks… Krank CAKES are made out of… wait for it… MUSHROOMS!"

Clutching onto the console, Rose tried to keep from blacking out, she was choking and laughing so hard. She was seeing stars, and Jack's hand gestures weren't helping her manage to draw in any more oxygen. Face practically pressed to the cool metal edge of the centre column, she pleadingly held up a hand. "Stop!" she managed to gasp finally. "Jack! Stop!"

But it didn't deter him in the least. He simply sat up straighter, continuing on with his tale. "So then, I come back into the ship, and he's higher than a kite, running around like a lunatic because something's become of his sonic screwdriver. But it's just in his trouser pocket. But he's lost his pants. I wasn't clear on how he lost his pants. And I'm like… oh crap. I need to get him, like, sedated or something before Rose shows up. So I beamed him. With the butt of my sonic blaster. And dragged him into the cloisters. You were coming, and I didn't know if you'd look for him in there, so I dumped him in the underbrush. Only I didn't know it was poison Entimire… which is why he was all shifty and twitching for the next week."

Remembering how odd the Doctor had been behaving when she'd seen him next, Rose collapsed to her knees on the grill floor and held her sides, trying not to die from the horror of it all.

Eventually, the red-faced, tearful laughs slowed, and she was left with rubbing her nose on the back of her long-sleeved t-shirt, trying not to pass out. "Oh God. Jack. Please stop. I keep thinking about him shifting around like he was going to jump out of his skin. Especially when we were in that prison on Zhendra Seven. Ohhhhh my god. They thought he was doing a mocking imitation of the goddess Tethra, and they sentenced him to death in the quicksand marshes..." She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, trying not to cough up a lung. "Oh god. You have to stop. He was so…tetchy back then. At least after he regenerated, he'd laugh at that sort of thing. But God. Wounding his precious Time Lord pride was the emotional equivalent of pulling his intestines up through his throat."

Sighing, she stared off dreamily. Falling onto her side, she plopped her backside onto the grill floor, finding a more comfortable position.

Jack grinned at her contentment. "He's not God, Rose."

Her face fell instantly. "I never said he was."

"You've elevated him to that level. He put his pants on one leg at a time, same as the rest of us. And I have proof he took 'em off once in a while too. Of course, I still have no idea why his pants were, like, strung across the console when I came into the ship. Not exactly how I pictured getting him to drop trou. But hey, whatever it takes, y'know."

Getting back to her knees, Rose sighed, something blissful on her face, quite similar to when she was curled up in his arms earlier. "My mother would love that. In ways I can't even tell you."

Jack held a hand out to help her get to her feet. "You ready to get out there and face the day?"

Almost upright, Rose stopped and looked her benefactor in the eye. "Maybe. What if we don't find an answer for this? What if it means something and we can't figure it out—what if it means nothing at all?"

He put a finger to her lips, hushing her. "What'd I say? Nothing like that."

Slowly, Rose's lips pulled back in a genuine, heart-felt smile. "You're right. Nothing like that. We'll get him back. Right?

His hand wrapped around hers. "You know I hope that, right?"

XYZ 

Sitting at the desk, Ianto continued to put his boss's things in order. She never tidied the thing herself, so the honour always fell upon him. If he had to say so, he did a better job of it anyway, so it was less of a burden to him.

Beside, at this point, it kept his little hands busy. As Yvonne Hartman had reported on last year's performance review, idle hands tended to get Ianto into trouble. It also meant that he didn't have to worry about acknowledging the other party in the glorified broom cupboard.

"I mean, really. What the hell's your boss doing to my boss in there? It's been hours."

Opening the lone fully-functional desk drawer, Ianto carefully placed some papers inside. "They are working on the problem at hand."

From the doorway, the man with the muppetus face frowned, eyes narrowing and lips pulling back. "And just what is that? A couple of boxes and some wooden cubes? And they need to be in that box to do it?"

Sharpening a dull pencil, Ianto placed it in the chipped mug on the desk. He'd tried to get her into a proper office, but she felt uncomfortable in the rest of the Torchwood building. These old, broken things were of comfort to her as well, and he couldn't bring himself to push the issue further. He couldn't describe his protective feelings toward Rose Tyler, their origin or their meaning. All he knew was that he would kill anyone who hurt her. Even if he had watched her put a bullet in the head of the woman he loved, with his own gun. He'd lived with these conflicted feelings for half a year now, and there appeared to be no resolution in sight.

Ianto wasn't entirely sure, but what he was feeling might be termed as some sort of love. NO doubt an unhealthy one, Stockholm-esque, even, given that he still avoided meeting her gaze if he could help it…but a type of love none-the-less. "They will inform us, if they feel it is relevant."

Doctor Harper made a noise of disapproval. "I don't get you. You're field rated, but you're just some… corporate yes man. You tidy up her desk, make her tea and shoot people she doesn't like."

A slow, pained smile pulled back on Ianto's lips. "You've been reading my file, then, sir?"

XYZ

Squinting, the Doctor gently grabbed hold of the wire-thin hinge pin on the backside of the small brass box with a tiny pair of plyers. Letting out a breath, he paused, not drawing in another, trying to do the delicate work of pulling out the tiny pin.

"It's three o' clock."

Swearing, the Doctor dropped the pliers, breaking off the small bit of pin he'd managed to get hold of. Spinning around, he glared at Jackie Tyler, who was wearing a rather natty light blue fitted jacket and a flowery maternity dress. She almost looked human, instead of the evil demon the Doctor knew her to be. "What the hell are you doing here? Can't I have a moment's peace?"

Jackie crossed her arms, folding them across her chest and resting them upon her ample bump. "You left without eating breakfast, and now it's three in the afternoon, and Pete says you haven't taken a break all day, so I'm here to make sure you eat, you ungrateful little-"

The Doctor spun back around, trying to find some new approach to opening the box now that the hinge pin idea was out. "Jackie, unlike your sad and pathetic human bodies which are so inefficient as to need to recuperate for a third of every day, and need fuel three times every waking period, my superior physiology can live without a meal now and again. I'm not going to eat simply because you've decided it's time for me to eat. Now, if you don't mind," he looked up from his work bench, deadly calm, "I'd be quite satisfied if you'd go find some other alien to mother-hen until your unfortunate little demon spawn makes her appearance in this topsy-turvy world. In the mean time, I have work to do. Namely I need to find out how a box that was sitting on my dresser, in the TARDIS, found its way into a storage facility in Cardiff. In a whole other universe. So…good day."

He really did deserve some kind of award for the amount of composure he'd managed to muster up there. Especially with Jackie Tyler, who didn't deserve even the least bit of politeness, considering she was a rude, obnoxious cow who was bent on making his life a living hell.

Of course she was Jackie Blinking Tyler, so she wasn't capable of taking even a non-subtle hint that she was being dismissed, which was why she was jingling his coat next to him, obviously attempting to annoy him into grabbing it.

Sighing, he snatched it from her. "What is wrong with you? Can't you see I'm busy? I don't have time for your stupid human rituals of eating every six hours, whether you're hungry or not."

And then she glared at him. Glared with the glare of a thousand suns, trying to make him spontaneously combust under the heat of her gaze.

So he did the only sensible thing. He flinched, then put the coat on. "If it means you'll shut up," he amended, possibly trying to save face, though he wasn't sure he had anything resembling dignity left, when it came to Jackie Tyler and the fifteen types of hell she put him through on a daily basis, all in the name of 'helping' him, quite possibly to death.

Pete kept telling him that Jackie didn't blame him. But she did. She had to, didn't she? And that's why she was doing this. This…being nice thing. All the time. But it wasn't really nice, because it was Jackie, and…

Running a hand through his hair, he stood up from the stool and regarded the contents of the work bench. To hell with it. He'd never figure Jackie Tyler out. That was right up there with figuring out what his relationship had been with Rose.

There was a tug on his sleeve. "It'll still be there when you get back. Stop making that face."

Turning off the work light, he shot her his most 'I can't believe you're doing this to me' look (as if he had an assortment of them, or something). "What face? The one that says you've just interrupted me in the middle of something important? Something more important than you could ever imagine with your itty bitty human brain?"

Hand on his back, she pushed him towards the door. "The one that says you want to dig your own grave, crawl into it, and die. The one you get whenever someone mentions Rose."

Teeth clenched tight, he walked right past her and out onto the main floor. He'd demanded privacy and space to look at the box and had shut himself in there at around seven. He hadn't answered the phone or responded to knocks at the door—this was too important. But he was letting himself be interrupted for yet another Jackie Tyler-sponsored foray into madness and dill-topped toasted sandwiches. Sometimes it was easier to just give in than to fight her—she was just a force of nature like that.

At least when Rose had been getting her way, she was cute about it. There was the tongue with the teeth, and that adorable little smile that made you want to take her back to meet her dead father and give her a pound of flesh as well, even if she hadn't asked for the latter.

It wasn't just that Rose was there, and he was here. It wasn't just that he didn't know what had become of, or what was happening to his ship (though he had a vivid imagination and could fill in the details)… it was this place. It was Jackie, the unfamiliar constellations (who the hell ever heard of Big Bertha, the Lamponne Goddess, anyway?)…toasted sandwiches with dill on top, mysteries he didn't have time to sort through, for his indulgence of a psychotic pregnant woman, and…and…other things. Other things he couldn't figure out or put a name to, a feeling in his gut that everything was soon to come to pieces, and a terrible yearning for a hand to hold.

The Doctor desperately wanted to go home.

XYZ

Ianto rose from his boss's chair when she emerged from the blue box with Captain Harkness in her wake. She smiled, something she didn't do often enough and nodded to him. "Ianto." Muttering her thanks for the cleaned up desk, she looked at the other party in the doorway, watching her as judgmentally as possible. "Doctor Harper?"

He gave a non-committal nod and looked at his boss. "So. What're we doing? Or did we come all the way down here for a booty call."

Jack Harkness was about to say something, Ianto knew, but Rose reached behind her and grabbed his hand. "And just what have YOU found out while we've been in there? I don't' suspect it's much, if you're standing around, bothering my assistant. Unless you're trying to get into HIS pants, MISTER Harper?"

Laughing, Harkness put his hands on her shoulders, maneuvering past her in the close space. He nodded to Ianto, and he got the weird signal again, the one that said Ianto should just wait right where he was, Jack'd be back around for him later. Which made no sense when coupled with just how defensive Harkness was of Miss Tyler.

Ianto could be reading it wrong, but he seldom did. It was why he had been Ms. Hartman's assistant—his ability to see beyond the situation, in addition to his…other unique skills that didn't bare mentioning in polite company. For the moment, however, Ianto chose to believe he was mistaken. He'd hate to think that his employer had taken up with someone who tossed his affections about so lightly.

"Owen, please tell me what you have on those other artifacts, before I'm forced to kill you. Please." Harkness said it with an officious tone that was totally counter to the grin spread across his lips, something flirty and unserious. It seemed to Ianto that Captain Harkness was a man of mixed signals and that was somehow reassuring to him.

The medic regarded them all with distain. "Nothing. Well, other than the sum total of knowledge of what we DON'T know about them. They're not scannable by anything we have here. Completely impenetrable, giving off no detectable energy signatures. We've run every test we can think of."

With that, Harkness looked back to Rose Tyler. "Anything in the TARDIS that'd help with that?"

She shrugged. "Probably. Anything we actually know how to use? That's another story." She looked different. It wasn't just the makeup, or the hair. There was something much more relaxed in her features, something she didn't even seem to possess before when she'd passed out from exhaustion. Even when her body couldn't propel her any further, there'd always seemed to be something on her face, something reserved. Something holding back for fear of having her spirit broken again. "You're welcome to take a look. But I'm not coming back in with you. I have things to do out here. I can't neglect my duties any longer."

The man who was undoubtedly her lover tossed her a lopsided grin as he headed for the door, probably to retrieve the artifacts in question. "I can't help it. I'm just that good."

When Rose blushed, she looked all of her twenty years. "Yeah, you just keep wishing, Jack Harkness. Now go do something PRODUCTIVE. Before I have Ianto shoot you for coming into my office uninvited."

That movie star grin still plastered across his face, the man winked at Ianto. "He wouldn't do a thing like that. Would you, Mister Jones? We've come to an understanding, he and I."

All the air rushed out of Ianto's lungs when the head of the Cardiff branch slapped him on the backside. It took him a second to collect himself. "I wouldn't go that far, sir."

Rose slapped Harkness playfully, and suddenly Ianto saw a side of her he'd never seen before. "Quit sexually harassing my staff, Captain." She pushed him toward the door. "And maybe accomplish something for once. Besides, I trust Ianto's professionalism. He can think you're cute and still shoot you. Can't you, Ianto?"

His mouth went dry. It took him a second to respond. "Yes, Miss."

"See? Now get the hell out of my office."

Harkness and his lackey fled after that, letting the door clack closed behind them. As soon as the room was still, Rose turned to her assistant, pressing her hands on the now-cleared desk, leaning toward him. "I want someone from Tochwood One with Captain Jack at all times. And I would prefer that it be you, Ianto. Let him see anything related to this dig, but nothing more than that."

Nodding, Ianto tucked his tie back inside his suit jacket. "You do not trust him, then?"

Looking very distant, Rose Tyler licked her lips. "With my life. But not as far as I can throw him. Does that make sense?"

Shaking his head no, Ianto rested his hand on the door. "But it doesn't need to," he reassured, leaving.

TBC…


	8. Chapter 8

It was a decent place to eat. He hadn't had any complaints about the atmosphere; the pattern on the carpet was mathematically attractive, or so he'd informed her, and the gold link pattern woven into the short navy shag went rather nicely with the rose marble pillars and oddly matched the deep green tablecloths.

The company was the thing that was off putting for both of them. They just sat at that square table near the fountain, trying not to look at each other. This was going splendidly.

After about twenty minutes of not watching him inspect every square inch of the menu, including the centre binding, Jackie decided to say something. "Well, pick something."

Rubbing his eyes with one hand, the Doctor absently pointed to something on the menu, which made Jackie want to kill him right then and there. There were days when she really could stab him in the hearts and feel little in the way of remorse, or at least that's what she told herself.

Looking down at what he planned on ordering, Jackie sighed. "Do you want cucumbers or peppers with it?"

"I don't know."

Eyeing him critically, the pregnant woman took a sip out of her crystal water glass. She put it down carefully before continuing in a harsh whisper. "Just pick one."

Rubbing his eyes with both hands, the Doctor sat back in his chair. "I really don't care." But she was glaring at him still, hoping he'd just choose. "Jackie, I am responsible for the deaths of three point seven trillion sentient beings in one afternoon. Excuse me if I can't muster up caring or interest in sandwich garnish. If you ask me what kind of cheese I want, I may reach across this table and kill you."

Huffing, Jackie closed her menu. He couldn't just make anything simple, could he?   
"It comes with Gouda anyway, you bloody alien oaf. It's just a bleeding sandwich. I don't understand why you need to turn it into an eleven o'clock production number."

Jaw jutting forward, his teeth ground audibly. Something dark and violent flittered behind his eyes. His last self had had a dangerous look about him. She'd dated enough of the type herself to know them when she saw them, but there had also been weariness there. Rose had once claimed she suspected it was a tiredness of death and destruction. This new him… there were times when that was completely gone from his eyes and something curious banished the lonely darkness and child-like wonder pushed all that other…stuff away. And there were times when he wore his heart on his sleeve. Those were the times when it was painfully obvious just what he'd done, and what he was capable of.

Licking her lips, Jackie slid one red-painted nail along the bottom edge of her glass, pulling away tiny droplets of condensation. There was something excessively motherly and a tiny bit harsh in her words, but she didn't care. "If you think I give a damn about any of that, you're sorely mistaken, mister. I don't care if you've killed an entire galaxy. It doesn't excuse you from table manners."

He chuckled bitterly. "Table manners? Jackie, you lived in a four-room flat up until half a year ago. I don't think you're in any position to tell me what to do with my napkin."

"Act civil, dammit."

With a slow, pained coolness, the Doctor put his napkin next to his plate. "I have things to do."

Before he could slide his chair away from the table, Jackie grabbed his hand. "You're not getting up."

He placed his free hand over hers and began an attempt to discretely pry her manicured fingernails from where they were digging into his flesh, and dislodge her fingers from around his boney, thin wrist. His teeth were clenched together and his voice dangerous, grinding and low. "Jackie, get off me, or so help me--"

Something vicious rose up within Jackie, something that started, strangely enough, at her knees, travelled along her spine and erupted from her in a quiet, restrained, cruel laugh. "You'll what? We both know you won't."

Thin fingers curled around the Doctor's napkin restlessly fiddling with the seam at one edge. "You don't know what I'm capable of."

Pointing one red-tipped finger of her other hand at him, his benefactor frowned in obvious displeasure. "I don't care what you're capable of. You're going to stop acting like—like—a stupid fool. Here's how it is. You always act so high and mighty, but you're not better than the rest of us. You're just not. And especially not when you're stranded here. You have to act just like the rest of us, and that means picking what you want on your sandwich. Then you can go back and be a moody bastard, and stare at that stupid box until you die or grow mould, or do whatever it is you people do. But you're going to eat first. Because I said so."

He finally managed to dig his fingers under hers and pull her hand free. "Just stop it."

"You first."

Sliding his hand away from hers, he at least had the decency to glance around to see if they were causing a disturbance in the quiet restaurant. "Why do we keep doing this?"

Any resemblance of decorum fell away at that moment and Jackie's rage quietly slipped out. "Because you act like you're the only one entitled to your grief. Rose is my daughter and I'm never going to see her again. I don't know what you two were to each other, but I'm not stupid, I can guess what two adults get up to all alone in space, it's probably the same thing two adults get up to all alone on Earth. I couldn't care less. But she's my daughter. And if I have to dry my eyes every day and carry on, then you do too. Git."

For a moment he was frozen there and she wasn't entirely sure he was breathing. Then she saw his Adam's apple raise, then lower tentatively, those sharp eyes never leaving hers. "My ship is dying, Jackie. You lost Rose. I lost—my ship is in that other universe, and it's dying. It isn't about—it isn't about the things you think it's about. But I have a chance to do something about all of this. And what am I doing?"

He thrust the napkin and menu away from him, angrily pushing the chair away from the table and rising. "I'm sitting here discussing sandwiches. Look, Jackie…I'm sorry for your loss. Or I can at least pretend like I have some say in all of this. At least let me have that."

Somehow Jackie managed to push herself to her feet with a speed she hadn't thought possible, considering her physical state. The next part was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him. It also held far more power behind it than the first time she'd ever done it—back when she was simply furious at him for keeping Rose away for a year, then acting like it was just a tiny little mistake. In fact, when she reached across the table and her hand connected with his jaw, she was certain she heard something slide around and pop, but was unsure as to whether it was in her own hand or his face.

They both stood there for a moment, breathless, neither daring to break eye contact or move. Finally, as the server approached to see what the ruckus was about, she slid back into the chair, still stunned, somehow, at her reaction. It wasn't that she hadn't ever hit him before. That was just the first time she'd meant it, since that day he'd brought Rose home an entire year too late.

A year of heartbreak and emotional sickness somehow seemed so little compared to what was burning within her right now. At least then Rose had been there, in front of her and safe, a repentant nineteen year old an arm's length away, trying to defend, through embarrassed looks and mumbled replies, the strange older man's behaviour.

Now her daughter was a universe away, and she was stuck here with this man—this alien who was as much the object of her pity as her derision. Rose had turned twenty-one there, alone. She'd had to make her own way with no one to fall back upon. To hell with the Doctor being lost without her (or his ship, if you hear him tell of it), her daughter was there, alone. Excuse her for not caring one iota about his blasted ship.

"Is everything alright here?" The waiter, an attractive man in his early thirties with a high hairline and a strong nose, clasped his hands in front of himself casually, with the confidence of someone who'd been about his job for quite a long time.

The Doctor, still standing, didn't press his hand to the red mark along his jaw; he simply stepped away from his chair. "Yes. We're done." He glared at Jackie for a moment and she almost felt as though she should be the one to look away, but she refused to give him anything resembling satisfaction.

Still not looking away, he slid into his coat and took a step away from the chair, the hard, murderous look in his eyes briefly changing to something round and apologetic just as he turned to flee.

She'd never understand him. Ever.

Jackie sighed, her head falling into her hand. She wished she hadn't behaved like that, she always did, but it didn't stop her. There was something about the Doctor that just made her incapable of ending on what she'd always start with, and that original thought would never get said.

Once the Doctor had left the premises, door swinging dramatically behind him, Jackie looked up at her server. "No. Looks like the problem's left." Trying to muster up some dignity, she opened her menu to order. She was too upset to actually read the words, however, and ended up just pointing to something in the middle of the page.

XYZ

He was just standing there. It was the oddest sight to behold. The Doctor was just standing there, in front of the oddly shaped metal sculpture, watching water bubble down its sides—hands in pockets and face looking so very serious under the blue and yellow neon lights spilling his way from the pub next to the little park.

It was not quite dark, probably early evening. There were leaves on the trees and the bulb plants had already begun to fade; it must have been early summer. Rose had trouble judging, sometimes—she didn't leave the office much, unless it was for something work-related, and really didn't know what the weather was like in London at the moment.

Of course it might have just been the strange neon lights, but there was something of a pained, disappointed look about the Doctor. The way his shoulders slumped and his hands were driven firmly into his trouser pockets, the downward set of his eyebrows and the thin line his expressive lips had become made it fairly evident a thousand things were playing through his mind, none of them pleasant.

She wanted to reach out and touch him—to hug him and tell him that everything was fine—she was right there, all was right in the universe. She wanted to take his hand and run back to the TARDIS and on to their next great adventure.

There was just one problem with that noble desire—none of this was real.

She'd had enough dreams about him in the last half of a year to know when she was sleeping. One article she'd read on the Internet suggested it was part of her mind's way of dealing with grief—replaying old moments and conversations, taking her back to a time when everything was fine.

If that was true, then, why did she see zeppelins when she looked up?

Well, that was fairly easy to decipher, if she thought about it. She was dreaming of him, and what he must be doing. There had been a few of those dreams—somehow they'd always involved Mickey taking her place. They were always weird ones involving Mickey and the Doctor holding hands and running, and when she woke, she'd always laugh at the thought for just a moment, right before the hollowness in the pit of her stomach took over and swallowed her whole.

Circling around the Doctor, she took in his rumpled state. His hair was a bit longer than she remembered. While his coat was nearly identical to his old one, it wasn't exactly the same. It was a little bit lighter, but that could have just been the quickly approaching twilight playing with her eyes. His suit was rumpled, as if he'd been through hell and back and hadn't stopped for a change of clothes anywhere along the way, and his eyes looked so very tired.

A few cars passed in the distance, their engines whining as they faded off into nothingness. Occasionally leaves rustled overhead, a high-pitched clattering. Mostly the only thing she could hear was the water trickling down the brass sculpture, into the stylized drain beneath it. The air smelled like battered, fried broccoli, of all things (though she had no idea how she knew what that smelled like), and there was a polleny bite to the air that she could feel on her tongue.

Rose had no idea how her brain could be thinking it sensed these ephemeral things, this being a strange and boring dream, after all.

She circled around him one more time, but stopped when he looked over one shoulder, then the other, as if he had seen her. Stopping beside him, Rose had an odd hope. "Doctor?"

It was just a dream. But that didn't mean she couldn't take what comfort it could offer.

Sighing, he went back to watching the water trickle down the bulbous curves of metal, the tendrils of liquid reflecting the few dim lights around them. Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back, letting out another deep, pained breath, this time through his nose. "You never could just do what I told you. Normal territory for a human being. I say stay, you lot go. I say don't wander off, what's the first thing a human being does? Nyssa never wandered off. K-9 never wandered off. Human beings always wander off. It's like something genetically seeded in the human race—the incessant need to disobey orders and jump, feet first, into trouble."

Rose's breath caught in her chest. "Doctor? D'you mean me?" He'd never spoken to her in her dreams before. Not like this—if it had been anything at all, it had been snippets of old conversations. This was…new. But she'd take it. She'd greedily accept any sort of comfort or reminder that the universe or her subconscious would let her have.

Opening his eyes, he shifted forward and backward on his heels, almost bouncing. It seemed to be some sort of physical representation of his agitation and thought process. "I mean—I tell you to go home and forget about me. You keep following me around London. Ok, that was kind of ok, because you did save my life. But I send the TARDIS back home to your insane, deranged fruitcake psychotic delusional freakish lunatic of a mother, and you come back. I send you to another dimension to keep you safe…you come back."

One more anxiety-ridden breath later, he took a few steps forward, toward the water sculpture thingy and reached a hand out, touching the metal. It disrupted the flow of water, causing it to split and pour around his hand. "You always came back. And now you can't. You're some place you didn't wander off to, and you're some place you can't wander back from. And it's killing me."

Rose did try to reach out to touch him with that, to comfort both of them Those words made her heart break all over again, as if it hadn't broken a hundred times lately. Apparently she wasn't as hard as she'd feared she was, yet. There was still enough of her soul left to cause her to break out into tears. In a dream.

She could feel the sob burning in the back of her throat, smell the battered and fried vegetables, but she couldn't touch him. It was as if this representation of herself had no arms, or that distance and perception had no meaning, because she reached out and her hands connected with nothing. "I'm trying to get back to you," she promised, knowing that even this dream construct of the Doctor could not hear her.

It was almost startling when he turned and looked through her, continuing to think out loud. "I'm trying to get back to you. To there. It's not working. It's all so useless. I'm so useless."

was said with such passionate determination that if she didn't know better, she'd believe it to be so. "You're not useless," she promised. "There've been setbacks. But I've not given up on you. Don't you give up on me."

If he were real—if this was real—she'd be tugging on his jacket sleeve trying to force him to make eye contact with her. As it was, this shouting out into the nothingness was all that she had, and while it may be irrelevant and entirely not real—it was hers. It was something. She could shout encouragement to him, even if it was more words of comfort to herself. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'll be the first to admit that," she confessed. "And I'm scared, because I got the box to open, and--"

His head snapped up suddenly and he looked past the sculpture, to the trees. "It was empty. I got it open. I don't know what I was expecting to be in there—but there wasn't anything. Dust. There was dust in there. Why dust? In a closed box? That little mystery is the only thing that keeps me from just…just doing something drastic right now. I need to know what it means."

Rose felt as though she'd been punched in the stomach. "You're real, aren't you?"

TBC…


	9. Chapter 9

And it wasn't just that he was talking to himself. He'd al

ways done that. Or that he was talking to someone that wasn't there. He'd caught himself drawing in a breath to say something to her at least once a day for the last six months, only to remember that she wasn't around. It was the part where it had felt like she was there. Felt so intensely—like he could just reach beside him and take her hand, the way he always did.

That was what had disturbed him. The sensation of her body next to his, her voice encouraging him, though he couldn't hear the words.

He stared off into nothingness for a bit, listening to the crickets begin their nightly trill, wondering if he'd finally gone round the bend. Wouldn't be the first time.

Leave it to Jackie Tyler to drive that last bit of sanity out of him. Over a sandwich. Of course, he let her, so what did that say about him?

It might not have been Jackie. She'd been making him crazy for years now. It might have been opening that box. He'd gone back to Torchwood and barricaded (quite literally) himself in the office, after melting the locking mechanism in the secured position with his sonic screwdriver. He'd sat there, and he'd worked on that box for another four hours, until it gave way, the lid finally popping opened, once he got disgusted with trying to be gentle.

And inside…dust. Dirty, dusty…dust. Dust balls,…little linty grey things.

He hadn't closed the blind, though, and the late-afternoon sun caught in what was kicked up by him removing the lid, blinding him in a goldeny haze and forcing him to sneeze half a dozen times in quick succession before he put the lid back on.

Rubbing his eyes, he cleared away the rest of whatever had puffed out of that box, the one that had been sitting on his dresser the last time he'd checked (not that he was in a habit of checking the dresser, which had become a junk collection, but the point was that it had been safely tucked in another universe). When he could see again, he'd been staring down at the soft red lining, dust particles still clinging to it. And nothing inside.

There should have been a key, a wind-up watch, two Alrootian Damas and that ugly broach from his academy graduation robes. Well, that's what had been in the box on his dresser, at any rate. Hadn't opened the thing in years. The Alrootian Damas had fallen remarkably in value after the whole system had been sucked into a black hole, he hated that damned jade brooch, so it wasn't like he was going to whip it out and remember old times, the wind-up watch was stolen and the key belonged to the scroll case he'd gouged a terrible scratch into back during his fourth life in a sad tale involving Romana attempting to distract him with food (it had worked, too, but that wasn't the point).

But it was his box. He knew, he'd made the damned thing.

Why was it in this universe?

Why was anything the way it appeared to be? Was anything as it appeared to be? What was the nature of reality? Or the nature of truth? And why was he being tormented with the smell of fried broccoli? Who would fry broccoli, anyhow?

A few streetlamps had turned on about a block away from the park, which was now dark and a tad ominous. Realising he couldn't stay there forever, he looked around again, as if he hoped to catch a fleeting glimpse of the ghost that seemed to be haunting him. Finding nothing, he reached out and touched the cool water spilling down the sculpture again, as if that would somehow ground him to reality.

He let the tendrils of water pour around his hand for a moment. "I don't belong here," he said to no one, and nothing. "Sometimes, I don't belong here so much it twists my guts inside out. You understand that, don't you? You always did. Understood me. I wonder why you did. I mean—why you? You're just Rose Tyler. A shop girl. From Earth. Not even from a decent century. Not the brightest of my companions. Not even the fastest runner. And lemme tell you—it would have helped a time or two if your legs would have been a little longer, or you'd have had a bit more speed. Your roots are showing half the time, your eyebrows are a little weird, and you were a consummate slob. That should have knocked you down on the list of potential best companions right there."

Slowly, as if he didn't know how it would be received, the Doctor slid his other hand into the stream of water, letting his weight rest against the twists and lumps of brass. "I told Pete that he's living proof there's someone for everyone. Even Jackie 'Deranged Lunatic' Tyler. I guess, through no fault of my own, you somehow became my someone. I wonder why that is." He looked over his shoulder again, as if she should be there. And for a moment, the way the shadows moved when the trees rustled, he thought she almost might be.

Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply, vanilla and patchouli, the scents of Rose's soap, tugged at his nostrils. "Rassilon's breath. Even my nose is hallucinating." Drawing in another breath, the scent was gone. "You know. If I was going to have a 'someone,' it probably should have been Romana. She was absolutely adorable with all of her 'and this is what they said in our lectures' stuff. As if doing things by the book would actually save you when you're out and about, nearly getting yourself blown up and shot at and exploded every day before breakfast. She resented that deeply, I might add, taking every opportunity to point out just how ludicrous it was that we couldn't have something to eat before engaging in our daily activities of trying to get one another killed."

He smiled, surprised that the memory could be of such a comfort. "You'd have liked her. You'd have probably liked Tegan too. She wasn't particularly impressed by me either. Or Ace. That girl could swing an aluminum bat like nobody's business. Violent thing. But a lovely girl. When she wasn't trying to blow us up."

One hand tentatively slid away from the sculpture while his other roamed slowly over the bumpy surface taking some sort of odd comfort in the texture. "But of all those people I travelled with…you're my 'one.' Isn't that weird?" A real, sincere smile pulled at his lips, a sparkle dancing behind his eyes. "I've never had a 'one' before. Well, I guess that's why you're the 'one' because there's only one of you. If there was more than one, then you wouldn't be the one at all, you'd be something else entirely."

Chuckling, he looked up at the rustling leaves overhead. "Not that it matters. You'll never know because I didn't figure it out soon enough. Because I'm just talking to myself, and because I'll never see you again." Standing up straight, he took his other hand out of the stream and shook it dry. Tugging on the edge of his suit jacket, he sniffed. "Glad we had this talk, Rose. We should do it again sometime."

And without another word, he turned on his heels and left the park, heading toward the smell of fried broccoli.

XYZ

Her first instinct was to open her eyes, despite the daylight and brightness beyond them, but even before she could do that, Rose felt the nauseous vertigo grabbing hold of her, keeping her dizzy and still.

She was lying down. That at least seemed like a sound idea considering how dizzy she felt. There was something on her hand. It felt weird and restrained—though not as restrained and held back as her nose, which seemed to also be the victim of some piece of equipment. Some machine beeped in the distance.

Listening to its consistent cries every second or so, Rose concentrated on its steadiness for a moment or two, until she felt she could keep it together long enough to open one eye.

The room probably wasn't bright. It just appeared to be that way to Rose, who had stabbing pains running from her eyes, straight through her brain and back to her neck. It took her a few moments to focus on anything. The first thing that swam into her view was some piece of medical equipment. It wasn't THAT bad of a headache, was it?

Then she saw the IV line in her wrist, felt the tube pushing oxygen into her nose, making it tingle and kind of burn. Moaning, she tried to sit up a bit, to gauge the rest of the state of her.

"Hey, look who's awake," someone said beside her.

Turning her head, she saw Jack sitting in a chair, a tiny smile across his lips. The act caused her head to hurt, though, so she closed her eyes and slid back against the pillow. "Jack?" At least that part of her life in the last few weeks hadn't been a dream.

His big hand gently brushed the hair from her forehead. There was a lightness to his touch that she wouldn't have expected. "You had us worried for a bit. You stopped breathing a couple of times."

Her eyes focused on him for real. His hair was a little oily and there was stubble on his face. "What happened?"

Instead of answering her, he pressed a button on his headset. "She's awake. Yeah. I think she's OK. But I still want someone to confirm." After talking to the party on the other end for a few more moments, the call ended and he turned back to her, taking the hand that wasn't all tangled in intravenous tubing. "Well, somebody thought it'd be brilliant to pry the lid off that box, while we were all looking at the results from the cylinder scans. You had some kind of massive seizure and scared the living shit out of us, first of all. And you've spent the last few days worrying us half to death. I don't think your man Ianto has gone home in all that time."

Letting her eyes slide closed again, she sighed. "Sorry. I don't remember--" Rose sat up abruptly. "I have names I want you to look up. Right now. In connection with the files on the Doctor. I think something happened…"

Jack squeezed her arm. "You need to rest right now. That's what you need to do. People don't just bounce right back from this sort of stuff. It's going to take a few days."

Tearing the tubes away from her face, she shook her head. "Jack. Listen to me. I need to confirm something. Right now. I need to know if it was all a dream. Look up these names. Romana, I think she was a Time Lady. Um…Ace. Tegan. Nass—Nissa. No. Nyssa. See if they have any connection to the Doctor."

He tried to push her shoulders back toward the bed, but Rose resisted, weakly though it may be. "Ok, fine. Look. Just lay back down. You need rest. We'll talk about this after the medics look you over."

Feeling exhaustion overtake her again, she curled onto her side. "Get Ianto. He'll do it for me," she muttered, squeezing the pillow for comfort. It smelled…well, like nothing. She wondered if she could get Jack to bring her the Doctor's pillow from the ship. Then she could close her eyes, take a deep breath and imagine she was still standing in the park, next to the Doctor.

Then she could just give in to the comfort of dreams and let herself fall into them. That was one of the huge reasons she had such trouble sleeping—she wanted to be doing something for him. But a dream like that—even though it killed her to see him like that—was something for her. And after all this time, and with Jack beside her, she was beginning to feel that she at least deserved those moments.

Rose patiently endured the whole battery of tests—follow the light, what year is it…

The whole lights flashing in front of her eyes really did not do great things for the ever-present headache. She also had Jack's continued insistence that she needed to put up with this before he was going to start working on the problem she had presented him with. She'd tried to pull rank; he'd calmly pointed out that she was technically incapacitated, so he was technically in charge.

Oh yeah, and he also didn't appreciate being watched, but was glad it had been by someone who looked as good in a suit as Ianto did, if watching had to transpire. Surprisingly, he hadn't been angry. Somehow he understood, it seemed, her lack of trust. Which was somewhat reassuring. He wasn't asking her to do something she couldn't—and he wasn't putting up with it, either.

By the time that was all over, she was well and truly exhausted. Ianto stopped in to give her an update on the artifacts, plus a few other of Torchwood's projects, but she only half-listened. Jack had been right—having your head scrambled by a dusty box did take a lot out of you.

It wasn't too much longer before Ianto stopped mid-sentence, dimmed the lights and left. Only a minute or two later and she was asleep again, lost in some place filled with baubles stacked on books, and books stacked on books in mountains and pillars.

In the middle of these mini works of architecture sat the Doctor, his back to her, head occasionally moving back and forth as he inspected something in his hands. He was buried behind a stack of leather-bound hardbacks and she couldn't see what he was working on. The dim light flickering across his hair and the slump of his shoulders made her lonely.

Walking closer to him, she looked at the reflection of her own image in the glass. She looked like hell—she had three days worth of bed head, circles under the eyes, slightly sunken cheeks, and a ghostly, shapeless hospital dress hanging from her like a drape. She was a fright. Even more so than the day she wandered out of the TARDIS in nothing but a sheet. Leaning over the stack, she tried to look at what he was working on, and could see a box, strangely similar to the one that had thrown her for such a loop a few days prior.

She wanted a closer look, so she leaned further over his shoulder, but somehow her apparition self seemed to block out the light, and he fell into shadow. It wasn't just that she couldn't see what he was holding that was so odd, it was the Doctor's reaction.

His head snapped up, eyes wide and something unreadable moving across his lips. When he spun around, crashing into the books, forcing them to scatter all around him, she was filled with a weird, brief hope.

It was fleeting; when the Doctor didn't find anything behind him, he turned back to the window, crawling toward it, climbing over books and anything else in his path. His fingertips pressed against the image of her hollow cheek in the glass. "Rose?"

Breath catching, she walked toward him. "Can you see me? For real?" This had better not be just a dream. This had just better not be. She'd been ready to accept any comfort given to her by dreams or otherwise, but she couldn't stand the look on his face, the one that looked as solitary as she felt. "Please tell me you can see me."

But he just blinked a few times, as if the vision of her had faded. Rose looked at the glass, and her image was gone.

Sighing, the Doctor sat back on the floor, running his hands through his hair. "I really am going mad."

Once again Rose tried to reach for him, but she wasn't just incorporeal, she was insubstantial—she couldn't even see her own hand grasping for his. "I'm here. I think. Sort of." Sighing, she knelt beside him. "It isn't fair, is it?"

His head lowered to his chest. "It ISN'T fair."

She didn't know if it was a response, or if their thoughts just trailed along similar lines right now. Perhaps it was too much to hope for, that they were somehow connected?

Putting her head on his shoulder, wrapping an arm about him, she looked at the box on the floor. "It's that box, isn't it? I have two of them myself, it seems. One from your room, another we dug up in the middle of a playing field." She smiled, remembering the night all of this started. One thing she'd learned to do as of late was to take her good moments wherever they came, even in the midst of something else. "It was so cold that night. I was afraid we'd be wheeling Ianto's frozen corpse back into Torchwood. Jack works for Torchwood. He's alive, you know."

Even though she couldn't feel him, she brushed the back of her hand against his stubbled neck. Her mind could imagine the texture of it—kind of soft, kind of prickly, all at the same time. He'd nearly ripped her cheeks off often enough when his beard had been at that uncomfortable day-old stage. Give him three or four days locked up in a prison cell, however, and it was kind of a nice sensation, instead of sandpapery. She missed the feel of it . "I hope you don't mind…he and I… well, I guess it's not worth going into. Seeing as how you can't hear me or anything like that."

He glanced from the window to the box, pulling one knee to his chest. "They all move on, Rose. All of my companions did. So it's ok. Whatever you're doing now. It's alright."

The Doctor smelled of fried food and cheap beer, which was an odd scent, not one she would have normally expected. But she leaned her non-existent nose closer to him, brushing against his neck, and breathed in the scent from his collar. "I don't want it to be ok," she whispered. "Remember the way you used to run them off? A glare and that evil little grin that said 'if you touch her, I'll beat you to death with your own leg.' You know the one. I liked that look. I used to flirt with Jack just so you'd glare at him menacingly. I guess I can admit that now. But Jack's so alone, too. I think he has a weird crush on my secretary—oh that's a whole story for another time—ME with a secretary. I still feel like I should be folding shirts somewhere."

After a moment, he slid out of her virtual grasp and reached for the box, holding it to his chest. "I bet whatever you're doing. It's magnificent. No more folding shirts for you. Or socks. Do they fold socks? Is that how they get so neat and tidy on those displays? I never asked you. I should have. I wish I could have. Maybe your mum will know. But then I'd have to talk to her." He made a disgusted face.

Rose laughed. "I'm sure you two are the best of friends."

Sighing, he opened the box and ran his fingers through the dust. Rose was surprised to see it looked identical to the one she'd found on his dresser—dust included. "Oh Rose. I messed it up, completely. She keeps a roof over my head and makes me eat and sleep, even when I don't want to, and what do I do? And all for a box with nothing in it. All for a box that doesn't make any sense. I had a pissing match in public with a pregnant woman. I'm less the Oncoming Storm now days and more like… the Oncoming Petulance." He rubbed his fingers together, depositing the dust back into the box. "I miss my ship. Nothing ever stays the same, I know that. Change is the only constant in the universe. But just to be travelling again… Just to have a hand to hold…"

Instinctively, she reached for his hand and almost felt it—that soft part just above his knuckles and the texture of the hair at his wrist. It was fleeting, but for a moment she almost had it. "At least you have mum. Could be worse, yeah? Of course it could. It could always be worse." It was a strange comfort she'd come to dwell upon in the last few months. "You could be in the Void."

Closing the box, the Doctor looked back at the ceiling. "It could be worse than Raging Hormone Jackie. I could be in the Void. Oh that'd be loads of fun. Me, five million Cybermen and a few more million Daleks. That's what I call a party. At least I have your mum, I suppose. And Mickey. He knows how to kick a man when he's down. Nothing quite like being picked on by Ricky the Idiot for getting a tiny bit accidentally captured."

Sliding onto his back, he pulled a large dictionary under his head like a pillow. Clutching the box to him like a teddy bear, he closed his eyes. "Of course, I am the one talking to myself. Which is just nuts. Nutser than usual."

Letting out a breath, he relaxed a bit, leaning into the book as if it were a pillow. "Either…it's getting better, or it's getting worse." Yawning, his elbows hit the wooden floor, the box sliding in his grasp. "Worst part is—don't care which."

His breathing dropped off, and Rose knew he was asleep. Without anything else to do, she sat beside him, watching the rise and fall of his chest. He seemed so innocent and relaxed, as if the weird vision of her had somehow done him some good, instead of disturbing him further. Those fine brown lashes rested against his freckled cheeks and his mouth opened just a bit as air passed freely in and out of his lungs. In that moment, he looked so very young.

Reaching out, she tried to touch his hair, to run her fingers through it, but once again felt nothing—even less nothing than usual—it seemed even the memory of his hair between her fingers was lost to her. So she watched him and waited.

It took a while, but slowly, a thought came to her then—if she really was in some in-between place…just how did SHE wake up, exactly?

TBC…


	10. Chapter 10

"Yeah, well, Jack Harkness, you still aren't the boss of me." Turning on her heels, Rose marched past her desk and back into the TARDIS, huffing and flustered.

This whole argument had started over her passing out again. Well, it wasn't like they could prove she'd passed out. So she'd been asleep at her desk, holding the box? So what? It wasn't like she'd had another massive seizure or had stopped breathing again (that they could prove). So what the hell were they so worried about?

It had been three weeks since the first incident. Couldn't they just let the whole thing go?

Apparently not.

She stroked the console for a moment, sending soothing thoughts its way, trying to reassure the ship that everything was all right, even if it kind of wasn't. "He just…marches in here and starts telling me what to do. What am I? Twelve? He thinks I'm twelve."

It might have been her own addled brain (which seemed to be failing her more and more these days—sometimes she thought she heard the ship in her mind, sometimes she thought she saw the Doctor out of the corner of her eye) backfiring, but the sound from the ship seemed to change to a sympathetic hum. Was it wrong for her to think of the ship as her best friend? It seemed like the TARDIS was all she had left right now.

The TARDIS… and the dreams. "You understand. I know you do."

Sighing with frustration that Jack would be so… so… the way Jack was being about it, she gave the console another reaffirming stroke, and then slowly clomped across the catwalk, across the chamber and into the hallway, intending to go back to her room.

Somehow, though, she found herself curled up on a familiar bed, holding a familiar-smelling pillow to her chest. The feeling of loneliness had been ever-present this last half year. But it hadn't stung like this. It hadn't bit at her because she hadn't let it. With Jack back in her life it seemed that some new capacity for emptiness had opened up. It wasn't because of Jack's presence. When things were going well between them, it was like a warm, sunny day. When things were like this…it was like something stabbing her in the chest.

More tests would be a waste of time. If she had learned anything lately, it was effective time and resource management. It was stupid; if it had been anyone else, Jack wouldn't be pressing for endless scans every time she had a 'spell' as she liked to call it. He wouldn't have left for Cardiff last week when nothing new turned up, then come rushing back down just to lord over her and act as if she should listen to him for some reason, just because he was Jack Harkness.

Closing her eyes, she buried her nose in the pillow. Life used to be so much simpler. There'd been the Doctor and the TARDIS. Laughing and running. Holding hands and knowing that even if she was alone, lost or captured, she wasn't going it alone.

How had Jack found out about her…incident?

Well, that was quite simple when she thought about it, really. Ianto.

In any other case, she'd think that it was time to check her man's loyalties, except that he probably saw himself as fulfilling an obligation to her. Rose was pretty sure she'd just about never figure the man out. What kind of person would give that type of loyalty and care to her, after what she'd done to him?

Pulling the blanket up to her chin, she wondered how often the Doctor had slept in this bed? She shouldn't be here, she knew. But she kept finding herself drawn back to this room, over and over, now that she'd found it. To sleep some nights, sometimes just to enjoy the companionable hum of the ship and stare at the now overly familiar infinity symbols. A few times to pick through the bits and pieces lying about. There was something comforting about turning the little lead soldiers in her hands over and over, or running her fingers along the miles and miles of twisted up scarf on the dresser. There was something normal about it that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

This bed seemed as good of a place as any to hole up against the world for a moment, even if she wasn't tired.

That wasn't true. She was tired—physically exhausted. But she wasn't sleepy. She'd recently become intimately acquainted with the difference. Physical and mental exhaustion seldom had anything at all to do with getting sleep. Sometimes the mind would just not stop spinning.

Despite all of this, she snuggled her head closer to the pillow, remembering his arms around her, under the ribs crushing her as he swung her around, just after they'd escaped the planet outside the black hole. Oh to have him carelessly crush the life out of her again. Even to just have a hand to hold.

Closing her eyes she imagined the feel of his thin fingers on her hair. It was so vivid she could almost smell the cotton of his shirt.

Ghosts.

Everything about him haunted her lately, in ways they never had before these dreams had started. Maybe Jack was right. Maybe she needed more medical attention—drugs to keep the dreams at bay, monitoring of her vitals to figure out why her breathing frittered off and would not start again without intervention when the images of the Doctor came.

If she was finding some new level of madness, then she really ought to be treated. Insanity couldn't be good, could it? And it certainly wasn't healthy that she was alright with having near-death experiences if it meant she could see the Doctor for a few moments. It was all very fleeting, so terribly ephemeral… but it was all she had.

Perhaps she'd see him now, if she could manage sleep.

Perhaps she'd stop breathing again, and no one would find her in time. What would happen then? Would she find peace? The rest her tired body so desperately craved? Would she be trapped…seeing him but not being able to touch him, forever?

The thought jarred in her chest, causing something painful to catch just below her heart. She needed to talk to Jack. It wasn't that she feared death, it wasn't that at all. It was that she was seeing death as some sort of solution to her exhaustion that was disturbing to her. Even more disturbing than being stuck in some sort of limbo.

These last months had been tiring, but it seemed within the last week or so she'd managed to find some new level. When she did have a dream, she was more tired when she woke than when she'd fallen asleep. It could have been anything—the oxygen deprivation, the weird brain activity they'd seen after her one and only seizure. But it wasn't that. It was something else. She didn't know what—but it was important.

Everything was important. Everything was something. Unless it was nothing. Not everything was something. Just the things that were something…

She must have drifted off, because for a moment, she'd been swimming in a golden light, feeling like she knew the answer to everything. There was no way of telling how long it had lasted—it seemed an instant and a lifetime. But it ended the moment Jack slid in behind her on the bed, wrapping his arm tightly around her waist.

Placing her arm over his, she brushed her fingers along the leather exterior of his wrist computer. "I'm still mad at you, you know."

He kissed her neck, just behind the ear. "I know."

Drifting back off, she tried to slide back into that golden dream. It had been warm and comforting, like the hum of the ship, but penetrating all of her senses. "Jack…once upon a time, I knew everything in the world. Why didn't I know this was coming?"

Before the other Torchwood head could answer, she was asleep.

XYZ

When Pete came into the bedroom to retire for the night, she saw Jackie standing at the far window between the heavy mostly-closed curtains, arms crossed over her chest. She had the haggard look he'd come to expect from her the last week or so, and the same distant look. "Go to bed, Jackie," he urged. It was practically a beg. But he didn't care if it got her away from the window, looking at the open expanse of grass like she was…lost. It wasn't a good look on her—she usually acted like she knew exactly what the hell was going on, even if she didn't.

Sighing, she turned slightly away from the glass. "He's up there talking to himself again."

Crossing the room, he grabbed her arm and gently dragged her toward the oversized bed. "Maybe it's his way of dealing with things. Maybe he just needs to talk them through."

Jackie tried to slide her arm out of his grasp, but he was quite firm with her. She probably thought he was being a brute, but he felt fairly certain he had the moral high ground on this one—she'd exhaust herself again and it wouldn't be good for the baby. "He's not talking to no one, though. He's talking to her. To Rose."

With a sigh, he sat on the edge of the bed, still holding on to her. "Jacks… some people do that, to work through grief." The G word was a bad word in their household. It wasn't one Jackie would subscribe to—Rose was alive, she kept telling him. They had nothing to grieve for. She just refused to believe that any sort of loss could have grief with it. Grief was for death and dying, she'd told him.

He turned down the blankets for her and waited until she'd crawled into bed, maneuvering her larger body into a comfortable position before he covered her.

She sighed, something far away and thoughtful causing her eyes to leak just a bit. "What if I've driven him to it? What if I've driven him around the bend. All over vegetables. Rose wouldn't forgive me for that."

Climbing in beside her, he kissed her forehead. "The man made a time travelling toaster, then threw it off the roof because he thought it was rubbish. If he has lost it, I don't think it had anything at all to do with you. Just this once." She looked away from him, frowning in concentrated unhappiness. "Jackie, you'll both be OK."

"Granted he doesn't do something stupid."

Snuggling closer, he put a hand on her belly. It seemed the baby was sleeping for a change. It certainly didn't understand the day/night cycle just yet, and that had certainly contributed to Jackie's bout a few months back. "Stupid like what?"

There was the distant sound of breaking glass, coming from the same wing, but further above and possibly on a different corridor in the house. A second of silence, then something thudded to the ground painfully, and possibly with broken bones. "Oh, maybe like that," she muttered with sweet sarcasm. "Betcha he just threw himself out of the attic window."

XYZ

She was in his bed. It was a little weird. It wasn't like he spent tons of time in his bedroom. But what was Rose doing there? It wasn't exactly something he'd imagined or would imagine. It seemed logical enough. Rose in his bedroom. On the surface. But beneath it all… well, just why had the thought never entered his head before?

Then there was Jack, with his arms around her, holding her firmly until she fell asleep, and then watching her draw in each breath.

That was something his tired little mind wouldn't have thought of on its own. Well, working under the assumption that he wasn't totally stark raving mad. He had just jumped through a window, after all, and for what could be termed as a lousy reason.

Jack was dead. He'd yelled out that he was the last man standing, and then there'd been the sound of death rays, coupled with the Daleks' assured attitude that everyone but the Doctor was dead.

Well, that didn't make him feel very good. Not that he was having dreams about Jack being alive. That was OK. It happened. It was the part where Jack was kissing Rose's neck, watching her breathe like it was… his place or something. It wasn't Jack's place. Not to have his arms around Rose, not to be in his bed.

Even if they did look cosy there. Cosy and comfy, like they belonged there, together…

Oh just commit, he told himself. Either they needed to get out of his bed, or they didn't. Who knew what else they did. In his bed. "Well, it's not like I'm using it at the moment. I suppose," he muttered, looking around the room.

Everything was as he'd left it. A stack of books he'd never gotten to, possibly from his seventh or eighth lives, old clothes and costumes strewn about over chairs, brick-a-brac on the dresser…

The dresser…

No box. The box should have been there. It was always there—he'd been using it as a paperweight. Had she moved it? Had she done something to it? Why do something to the box, but nothing else? Even his dirty clothes were still in a corner. What was she playing at, really?

Pacing back and forth frantically, he glared at the couple in the bed. "What would possess you to move the box? It didn't have hardly anything at all in it. It was just baubles and such. I mean, was it a fascinating box? But now you've got me worried, because I have the box but there's nothing in it…and the box has been in that world longer than me, but it's still in that world. How did it get off my dresser? What're you two doing?"

Perhaps the better question was…what was he doing, behaving as if this…event was real, when it was clearly not?

Well, his hallucinating had started this whole thing anyhow. He'd seen her, he'd seen his ship, and just… well. Yeah.

Going through that window really hadn't been… well, the brightest thing he'd ever done, had it? Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair and turned back to the couple in the bed. Rose usually wore such a peaceful face when she slept. It was very odd to see her lips pressed together and her forehead muscles clenched, as if she was thinking through some big problem. And Jack…

The man gently pulled his arm from around Rose and pressed a button on the headset around his ear. "She's asleep again Ianto. Thank you for calling me." He pulled the hair from her neck, inspecting her as he listened to the party on the other end. "I'm going to watch her. If she stops breathing again, or anything happens, I'll be on the horn to you immediately. If you see any spikes in the readings from the box again, let me know. No…but she's Rose. She's stubborn beyond belief. She won't back down. I hate to say it, but if we can prove a correlation between her health problems and the readings from the box, I'm going to have to take her off active duty."

Rose was having health problems? They had the box? Just what was going on here? More importantly, he supposed he should be asking just what his addled mind was conjuring up.

Jack sighed, relaxing further into the pillow behind her. "I know. I don't want to. But I think the most troubling part of all this is that she doesn't see anything as being wrong. I know she's tired, exhausted…worn down. But that'll only account for a few of the things we've seen so far. Not all of it. Exhaustion doesn't throw you into near-death experiences whenever you hit REM sleep. Or at least Owen says it shouldn't. Especially without some prior condition of this kind." He listened for a moment, then raised his hand to the headset. "Right. I appreciate it, again." Then he shut the thing off.

Near-death experiences.

Well, he had just thrown himself out of a fourth story window, over the fleeing glimpse of something in the glass. Not only did it make him not the poster boy for sanity, but it also made him wonder just how much of a dream this was. And would he wake up if he regenerated?

Sighing, he sat next to Rose on the bed, reaching out for her. There was no feeling in this strange limbo. There was the perceived scent of her shampoo, but that was it. All he could do was brush his fingers against her cheek and wonder just what the hell all of this meant. "Rose—I'm sorry."

In her sleep, her hand came up toward her face, almost clasping over his. Then her eyes snapped open, something dangerous and liquid flickering in them, and she sat up abruptly. She seemed to look through him and his heart leapt. "Rose. Can you see me?"

Jack sat up with her. "What is it?"

She reached a hand up, as if to caress his cheek, then slumped against her bedmate, going a bit slack. "It was just a dream."

With a tenderness that actually made the Doctor feel indebted to Jack, he slid his other arm around her and pulled her into a tight embrace. "What kind of dream?"

Rose tried to blink it away, but whatever 'it' was, it wouldn't go away. "There was a garden, and a path. And my mum was there."

Giving in to the warmth of Jack's arms, she relaxed a little. "Jack—you're right. Something is wrong with me." Sighing, she slid her hand up his neck. "I don't know what happened when I opened that thing." She pulled him towards her, and then kissed his lips tenderly.

With the casual assurance of long-time lovers, he slid his hands under her shirt, pressing her close to him by the small of her back as her fingers undid the buttons.

The Doctor knew he should look away, and yet he was fascinated. She slid the braces from his shoulders, he tugged her shirt away. It was so practiced, it was nearly a coordinated event. How long had they been...

And a few minutes later, when she was gasping Jack's name, the Doctor wondered what version of hell he'd drifted off into. They all moved on, he told himself. But here? With JACK? In his room?

Sighing, the Doctor closed his eyes, unable to watch more. Running a hand over his mouth, he shoved it into his pocket, marveling slightly at the odd, disembodied feeling that accompanied the actions. "Oh Rose. I've lost you all over again, haven't I?"

TBC…


	11. Chapter 11

Tugging a clean shirt over her head, Rose sat back down on the bed for a moment, staring at the metal deck plates peeking out from beneath the large throw rug in the centre of the bedroom. "Jack, can I ask you something?"

Sliding his arms through his braces, Jack tugged them up onto his shoulders. "Hmm?" Turning around casually, he flashed her an innocent smile.

Sighing, she rubbed her sweaty palms against the knees of her dark jeans. Letting out another concentrated breath, she let her hand rest on her legs as she continued to inspect the rough hewn lines where the plates met up with one another. "Why do we keep doing this?"

His eyebrow arched. "You complaining?"

Looking up at him, she couldn't help but smile—it was that bright thing with all the dazzling teeth and the twinkle in the eye. The irresistible one that warmed his heart when he was working late at night, now that they were back in each other's lives. "No. Not at all. You're…a master of the art. I just wonder why. And why here, of all places."

Jack sat down beside her, but at least had enough respect for the subject matter to not put his arm around her in some platitudinal sort of display of affection. "Why any of this, hon. Why did we end up here? Why did we find each other? Why is he on the other side and we're here?"

Rose shook her head, licking her lips, seeming to search for the words. "No. That isn't what I mean. And I think you know it."

With that, he did slide an arm around her waist but didn't squeeze her. He merely rested it there, maybe for comfort. For whom, it was unclear. "Well, it's not like he's using the room. I tolja that before. But geeze. Is this about him?"

She glared at him like he was visibly insane, her lips curling in disgust. "Is this about him. Is this about him? Jack—you're kidding me, right? Where the hell have you been, the last three weeks? Is this about him!"

Staring at one of the tapestries, he lost himself for a moment in the heavy weave of the fabric and the orange-gold symbol that had begun to haunt all of his time in London since he'd come here, demanding answers from the unknown new head of Torchwood One. The symbol had drawn him here, when he'd seen the lousy digital camera photo on the intranet. This seal was tied to the Doctor and it had now tied him and Rose back together, when they'd been so lost from each other for so long. It only stood to reason that it could do the same for them and the Doctor.

He looked down at his hands for a moment, trying to imagine the possibilities. That was part of the problem—he just lacked the mind to fathom it. While he had told Rose ages ago that they wouldn't get anywhere worrying about how they wouldn't get the Doctor back simply because he was probably the only one that could solve the puzzle, he was beginning to feel that type of cold despondency whenever he thought of the predicament they were in.

Rubbing her back, he tried to find the right way to say what he was thinking. "Rose…I don't have any illusions. I know what's between us. Does that help, at all? I know it's not nothing, but I know it isn't… what you want. Or with the person you want. But it's ok. It's ok with me. And if you want it to be ok with you, then I'm fine." Ok, so he was called Captain Jack, not Captain Coherent. He might be an expert at 'dancing,' but sometimes he just…didn't have the right words for affairs of the heart. Especially since the heart wasn't always involved in that.

Rose grabbed his hand and moved it from behind her back, and he assumed that he was in 'trouble,' or she was about to break it off. He had no idea what 'it' was, but the way she was severing the physical contact…it seemed very likely that she was severing the as-yet ambiguously defined relationship. She didn't push him away though, she just held his hand in both of hers, her thumb brushing over the tips of his nails. "I just…need."

Not something, someone. She just needed. It was certainly something he could sympathise with. He'd been in need of… well, a lot of things since he'd come back to this relative time period. He'd spent a lot of time alone, thinking. And that had sure as hell never done anyone any good. What COULD come of it? He'd just think of what he'd lost, didn't have and potentially couldn't have, and then he'd be in an even worse spot than when he'd started.

Twisting his hand around, he captured both of hers, squeezing them tightly. "I know. It's ok to, you know."

She licked her lips thoughtfully, and he wondered what was becoming of them. "It's just… it's not nothing, right? But it's not…never mind. I'd told myself to just say no. It's not like you're…that irresistible or something. I just…" Whatever she was going to say fell off into a sigh.

She just needed something; him, it, the contact…a few minutes of that hole inside her not aching quite so badly. Since he'd seen her last, she'd aged much. He still had the advantage of experience on his side, though. "It's fine. I promise. It's just one of the many services I provide, sweetheart."

And that was that. It wasn't anything that had been said, or any indication that she'd given, it was just something in the air. The conversation was over. For now. Which brought him to the next topic of conversation, it was time to go back to being the bad guy. "So. Now that that's settled. How's about letting Owen look you over one more time. Just to be sure…"

Turning away, she slid her hands out of his and then clasped them in front of her, unhappy that they were coming back around to this again. "Jack…"

"Don't 'Jack' me," he chided, trying to not sound as serious as he felt about the subject matter. Casual seemed like a good way to go…for now. His tactics seemed to change every fifteen and a half seconds with Rose.

When she spoke, she sounded so…despondent. "What good will it do?"

Oh. She wanted to play it like that? Ok.

Taking his time, he slid off the edge of the bed, casually sliding his hands into the deep pockets of his trousers and wandered around the room. There were books from cultures Jack had never encountered as a Time Agent, bits and pieces of broken machines, tiny headless statues, something that looked like a little green stuffed bear hugging a tiny stuffed human. It looked like a junk room just as much as an actual bedroom.

Picking up the bear, he regarded it for a moment. It was an ugly little thing, barely bigger than his palm, but it was oddly endearing. "Because. You fell asleep holding the box. You started having problems when you forced open the box. All the other times you'd either just had contact with the box, or were in close proximity. The once that we know about, there was a fluctuation with the box when your breathing stopped."

Slowly she turned around, looking at him as if she was beginning to put the coincidences together. Those brown eyes he was so fond of were wide, her lips slightly ajar. It all meant something to her.

Damned good thing too. He'd just been looking for some way to make this as serious to her as it was to him, but when he said it all like that, together…yeah, it made some sense. It made even more sense when her brows scrunched downward. "There's something else, isn't there? It wasn't just that list of names you rattled off to me, and some 'dream' of him you had. If you want us to solve this, we need all the information." He ran a hand through his hair, frustration suddenly running through him. "Dammit. Rose—you have your man Ianto on me every second I'm in the building. That's one thing. But you have to trust me enough to tell me what's going on."

Instantly Rose's demeanor changed and he knew he'd taken the wrong approach. He'd been almost getting through to her, putting it in the context of work—then he'd questioned her. It was a little aggravating that he could step back, make a plan, analyse it after it had all gone wrong, but couldn't get it right the first time.

Sitting up straight, her eyes bored into him, those strong eyebrows jutting downward in extreme displeasure. "My man Ianto. My man Ianto seems to have a loyalty problem lately. But that's not the point. Jack, really. Do you think you should have free roam here?"

All the air slipped out of his lungs. Putting the bear back down on the table where he'd gotten it from, he slowly made his way back to the bed. Cupping her cheeks in his hands, he brushed his thumb against her terribly smooth skin. "Rose, a long time ago, I told you that you were worth fighting for. Do you remember that? I do. Because I mean it. I meant it then and I mean it now. I'm willing to crawl into hell and back for you. But you need to give me a little something to work with. A little room to move around."

Without thinking, he kissed her forehead and then squeezed her to him. Didn't she see? Had she been playing this part for too long, that she didn't know how to be her old vibrant self, so open and willing and…well, just so very Rose? He knew she'd had to do those things. And there was some part of her that broke through—it was why Ianto looked at her the way he did when she was leaving the room. It's why her people were concerned for her.

Looking up at the ceiling, he gave her a quick shake, trying to impress his seriousness upon her. "I'm the one that's had too long to think too much and get too suspicious and bitter. If you're going to make a mistake—can't you just use one up on me, and give me a chance?"

Slowly—maybe even regretfully, she disengaged herself from Jack's embrace and got to her feet. Tugging her shirt straight, she pulled her hair off of her collar and walked to the mirror over the dresser. Leaning toward it, she touched the dark circles under her eyes, as if poking and prodding them would make them disappear.

Rubbing a finger against her lower lip, she looked at him through the mirror. "They're not just dreams—they're so vivid and real. They're getting more real, the more everything else seems to break and fail on me."

Jack's response was quiet, but firm. "The closer you come to death."

She nodded. "I can see him there, with mum. I can almost reach out and touch him. He has a box like ours. I don't know what it means. His is empty too, like the one we found at the dig. I don't know if they're just dreams, I don't know if I'm losing it. I think I question myself, and kind of tell myself it's all in my head just so that I won't be disappointed, if this all comes to nothing."

Grabbing something small and metal off the dresser, she began unscrewing and rescrewing the lid, repeatedly, fixating upon it. "When I'm awake, I see him out of the corner of my eye. It's like I can hear the ship, clearer and clearer every day, like she's teling me what she wants, some memory she wants me to go back to, but I just can't figure it out."

"This is why we need Owen to look you over. This is why I want someone to watch you, until we figure out what's going on," Jack pleaded desperately. "We could be very close to something. But we won't be any closer if something happens to you. Just…be sensible."

Putting the bauble back down on a small scrap of uncovered dresser surface, Rose turned around, something angry but controlled flickering behind her eyes. "And I'm not ready to be sensible. Not just yet." She pointed to the door. "Just get off my ship, Jack. Get out of here right now."

Staring at the door, not really able to will himself to move, Jack clenched his jaw tight. He wondered, once again, just how he'd managed to let that turn ugly. "Rose…"

"Just go."

XYZ

When the Doctor woke in those white hospital jammies in a white hospital room with nothing in it…he realised the error of his ways.

No monitors, no technology, nothing you'd normally associate with a twenty-first century hospital room —they knew him well. Sliding out of the bed, he walked to the door—it was locked . The glass had that break-resistant metal tread running through it, so that would be a less than effective means of escape. He looked down at his bare feet, then back to the bed—just a foam mattress.

Well, the error of all his ways, he supposed. Just the one that presumed that jumping out of a fourth story window was a good thing to do. 'Cause he'd been in a few mad houses in his time, and this was definitely the madhouse.

Jump out of one little window and you get sectioned. Really.

Tapping his bottom lip with two fingers, he began contemplating the problem at hand. Locked up equalled not good status. Confusing nature of vision that caused him to jump out of window, which resulted in said locked up status, equalled unresolved--and weird dream of unknown psychological origin, that took place shortly after jumping out of said window… intriguing.

No not the part where Rose and Jack had done wholly human and natural things on his nice silk sheets (which had been a gift, dammit!), that part was weird and disturbing, especially if his own little mind had cooked that up. It was possible that he was bonkers. He had seen Rose and his ship reflected in the glass, and had just gone through it on impulse, without even contemplating the four storey drop.

A thought popped into his head and he vigorously began running his fingers through his hair, and his tongue over his teeth. Nope. He hadn't regenerated. Probably.

Well, the good news was, he hadn't impaled himself on anything in his act of spontaneity. Just knocked himself out cold. Or had only been… not quite dead and not completely dead.

Near-death experiences… Well. It seemed to be a theme lately. Jack had said that Rose had stopped breathing several times. There had to be some connection. Even if he'd been conjuring these things, why had his mind followed down that path?

Flopping back onto the bed, he stared at the white tiles in the drop ceiling, wondering what it all meant. OH they'd come for him eventually—probably to figure out just how suicidal he was feeling (the jumping out the window thing—it was so misleading). Until then, it gave him some time and space to ponder this. In any other circumstances he'd be rushing right out here to get to work, but it wasn't like he had proper resources. Torchwood had the best facilities in the nation but they were still… inadequate to his purposes. Of course he could make it work. Given enough time and jiggery pokery, he could make all of their baubles and bits work. But where was the point in all that? Well, no there was a point. He just didn't have the patience to invest so much time into one single task.

Ok. Assuming this whole thing was in his head, what was his subconscious trying to tell him? Well, besides how he should have just let Jack's ship explode with Jack in it. Or some sort of strange commentary on his own insecurities and his almost obsessive thoughts of Rose. Well, in defense of his own obsessiveness, he was living with her mother. It was awful damned hard not to hear Jackie's shrill voice every morning ordering him down stairs for bacon or oatmeal or whatnot and not think of Rose.

That wasn't so important and somehow he had to put that aside. He needed to work on the problem at hand. Twiddling his thumbs and blowing out a slow, even, steadying breath, he began to concentrate on the other possibility—that it hadn't just been some kind of…near-death dream.

Well, ok, it had been a near-death dream. But maybe it wasn't JUST a dream. What was the deal with the box? Why did he have it, and why was it empty?

Then again… had it been empty? He hadn't seen anything. It was possible the contents were somehow out of phase with the physical realm, maybe in another reality entirely. It wasn't a dimensionally transcendental box by nature…he'd been required to make the damned thing in a wood working class. He had, however, added some, uh, little bits of fun. Just out of boredom.

He'd been back in his double digits when he'd done that. Could something he'd done as a joke, to keep his instructor from grading his project have had some kind of lasting effects now? Could a little dimensional lock that didn't even work too well have caused whatever weirdness was going on now?

Well, that wasn't necessarily a fair question. Every time he said something was impossible (usually because it just, y'know, wasn't possible) he'd end up finding out he was wrong. It almost seemed reasonable that some lock he'd fashioned out of shrapnel from a miscellaneous and unidentified TARDIS part found in a junk yard could be causing a box to hop dimensions, lose its contents and give him dreams so odd they were practically mouldy cheese-induced. But what it came own to was this: this was just goofy enough to be real, and just crazy enough to be something worth investing hope in.

Sighing with contentment, he laced his fingers behind his head, staring up at the dots and textures in the ceiling until they started making shapes. It was like staring at the clouds. That mass in the middle looked like a unicorn perched on an ice cream cone. Not a bad way to spend a few minutes basking in his new found hope, he supposed. After the fascination with hope wore off, he'd end up having to do something about it, and that'd require breaking out, so he'd better enjoy it while it lasted.

He could do the whole fake sick thingy, though if they were smart enough to remove everything from the room, they were probably smart enough not to fall for that too easily. There was always sticking with the original plan of just waiting until they came in to see how sane he felt like being. But he was getting bored with that idea, now that he actually had something to work with and investigate. It wouldn't take him too long to think up something spectacular would it?

There was always the drop ceiling. Even if there wasn't some means of immediate escape, the tiles were hung with metal hangers. That'd certainly be of some use.

The door clicked open and Mickey Smith poked his head through. "You ready to leave yet?"

Or he could just let the village idiot save him. Again.

Sitting up, the Doctor hopped off the bed, bouncing on his bare feet. "We really need to stop meeting like this."

The young man's cheek twitched. "Yeah, whatever. Jackie's sorry she tried ta make you eat your veg and she promises she'll never do it ever again. So you gonna come home and be a good little alien?"

Following after the young man, he marvelled at the ease of the operation. "Is this a break-out? 'Cause I think Jackie's house is the first place they're going to look for me."

As they casually made their way down the narrow white corridor, Mickey looked behind him to the Doctor, shaking his head. "You're a real piece of work, you know that?"

Lacking pockets to shove his hands into, the folded his arms over his chest, a smile of contentment spreading across his face. "Yeah. I know. But it's part of my charm."

TBC…


	12. Chapter 12

Buster Burgers and Pulled Pork existed only in this universe. The Doctor was grateful for that. Fast-food pulled pork seemed a little wrong to him.

That being said… he had to admit, it was good. Nothing quite like a gnarly, fat dripping ground cow with an ice cream scoop worth of shredded pork on top. It was just disgusting enough to be kind of… good.

Picking the dill off the sandwich, he shoved it back in the bag. That all being said—he wasn't sure what the fascination was in this reality with dill leaves. They were just so… dilly. And they looked weird. Like little thorns or spines.

Mickey chuckled as he unwrapped another plain, un-pork-ified burger. "The way I look at it, you owe me two, instead of just one. I saved you from Jackie's insane form of caring, and I saved you from dinner with her. That ought to get me something."

Not even bothering with eye contact, the Doctor continued to munch thoughtfully on something that could only be loosely described as food. He could certainly simulate near-death experiences, and see what became of that. But it didn't solve the problem of communication. Yelling at the top of his lungs only to never be heard really didn't appeal.

Looking up absently from his strange concoction of beef and pork, he tried to focus on Mickey. "What? Wait. Owe you one. Ok." Not important. Well, ok, maybe important, if he wanted to keep Ricky the Idiot on his good side, incase he needed help later on. "You know what I don't get?" he asked suddenly, putting the burger down on the wrapper.

"I mean—in my bed! Right there, in my bed. And it's like a train wreck, I just can't look away. Who would have thought she'd fancy Jack? Strike that—everybody fancies Jack. YOU probably fancy Jack. He has some kind of…sexual hypnosis thing going on. There was also the part where Rose used to flirt with anything in a pair of trousers. We picked up this one stray, Adam… I didn't want him. But she gets all soulful and big eyed, and anyway, the git almost ends up getting us killed. Rose had some poor fellow following around after her with sad puppy eyes on every planet we went to. But Jack? Jack's so… Jack. She should have had him figured out by now…"

He stopped, seeing Mickey sitting back in his hard plastic seat, arms crossed over his chest thoughtfully. "Well, I'm just saying. Jack's Jack. And she should know that he's Jack. And… in my bed! In my bed, and they've got the same box we've got, and it's doing something to her…"

There was a touch of humour in what Mickey said next. "You know, I CAN take you back there, if you're going to start acting nutty again. I'm sure the nice men in the white coats will enjoy trying to figure you out."

A woman with a tray full of mini-burgers looked at them oddly as she passed by them. The Doctor waited until she was safely tucked away in a corner booth before leaning in toward Mickey. "I'm not crazy. Well, no moreso than usual. And I don't think all of that was a dream, at least I'm choosing to behave as if it wasn't. Because, really. There is no deranged part of my psyche that could have come from. None. That's just too… Anyway. That box wasn't empty. I mean… it was empty. Besides dust. And something else. I think there was something else in there. I need to find some way to communicate. I need to find…"

Mickey was still looking at him like he was nuts. The Doctor sighed and grabbed the paper wrapped from beneath the other man's sandwich, causing it to fall all over Mickey's lap in a spectacular display of flying lettuce. "What the hell? Seriously--"

The Doctor shook his head, trying to let Mickey know now wasn't a good time to interrupt. Patting himself down, he began rummaging through the pockets of the suit they'd had to re-confiscate on their way out of the nut farm. Pulling things out of the coat pocket, he set a handful of change, two carved rocks and a rubber ducky on the table. Digging back into the pocket, he pulled out a thick black marker. "Ah hah!"

Uncapping it, he began scribbling on the paper furiously in wide, heavy text. When he ran out of room on that square of paper, he unwrapped another burger and continued his message.

The first piece of paper was forgotten, so Mickey grabbed it and began trying to decipher the scribbles of a man with obvious bad handwriting who was trying for the life of him to be neat about it. "'Dear Rose…' I already don't like how this starts. 'If you see this, leave me a note. You have my box and I have my box and it means…'" he trailed off as the Doctor passed him the next food wrapper even as he began scrolling across a third. "'Something, but I don't know what. Was your box empty too? I think there was something in mine, but it….' Doctor, what are you doing?" Mickey stopped abruptly, not taking the third wrapper from the Doctor to read the rest of the message.

Shaking his head, the Doctor barely managed to hold back his frustration. "She can see me, Mickey," the Doctor said with earnest. "I saw her. I saw my ship, in the glass. She can see me. But when I can see her, she can't see me, and we both have these boxes, see? And it's my box. So it shouldn't be here. But it's here. And it means something."

He spread the three wrappers out in front of him, studying them intently. "I just need to figure out what it all means."

Sitting back in his chair, Mickey crossed his arms over his chest as he looked the Doctor over, trying to figure the man out. "I really have no idea why Jackie and I talked Pete into getting you let out of there. No idea at all. I'm going to take you home, Jackie's going to fuss over you for fifteen minutes, then you're going to go off and do something completely bonkers and we'll end up doing this all over again."

The Doctor went from manic to dark in a matter of seconds. "Mickey, I am not crazy," he told the younger man sternly. "She has a box, I have the same box…"

"And you saw this all in a dream? The dream you had right after you jumped out the window, because you saw the TARDIS reflected in it? Excuse me if I'm having a little trouble with this, mate." Mickey fidgeted slightly, but at least tried to soften the blow. "Sometimes a dream is just a dream."

Holding up a finger, the Doctor looked down his nose at the other party in indignation. "Rose and Jack, having sex in MY bed. A man doesn't just dream that sort of thing up."

Mickey laughed bitterly. "Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that."

XYZ

When he came back out of the police box, Jack found Ianto was tidying the desk again. It seemed to be an almost compulsive habit.

Closing the door quietly behind him, Jack watched for a moment. He liked Ianto Jones. He almost didn't want to, the man was too quiet and watched him suspiciously every minute he was in the building. But he was good to Rose, which kept the young man with the immaculate suit and fit body in his good graces.

"Has she decided to listen to reason, then, sir?" Ianto asked drolly, never looking up from his organisation of the miscellaneous pieces of paper cluttering the scratched wood surface.

Sighing, Jack folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the blue door. "Of course not. She knows I'm right though, which is further than we were an hour ago. She's just taking this so…personally."

Ianto Jones had no reply for this. He simply put the paperclips back in the desk then began wiping dust from the screen of the open laptop in the corner.

Owen hated Rose's assistant, and with due cause, he supposed. It had been for the best that he'd left his medic to work on the problem back at Torchwood Three, instead of dragging him along on this trip that would probably result in nothing, other than more of Rose's stalling.

It was why he'd brought Gwen with him. If anyone could crack through the strange layers of barriers that Rose had built up over the last seven months, Gwen would have the best chance. Jack had thought it would be him; Rose let him closer than she'd let anyone in all that time, but…there was still something. She'd kicked him out of the TARDIS…out of 'her ship' as she'd called it.

Staring at the cupboard door on the other end of the so-called office, Jack suppressed a sigh. "Something's changing with her. And it isn't good."

Closing the laptop lid, Ianto got up from Rose's chair. "I can talk to her, sir."

Jack shook his head. "I appreciate the offer. But I don't know if she'd listen." Rose still didn't realise what she had in Ianto Jones, and probably wouldn't until it was too late, and she no longer could call him her man. "I'm going to sic my office bleeding-heart on her. Maybe there's just been too much testosterone in our approach to this point."

Walking past the desk, Jack made his way to the door. "Let me know when she feels like coming out and associating with the rest of us."

XYZ

Pete tried to hold onto Jackie's arm, but she slipped out of his grasp. She was about to do something stupid. He was beginning to learn the telltale signs. Usually she'd get up in arms about something, and thirty seconds later she'd go and do something about it, regardless of whether something needed to be done or not, and usually before she thought better. "Jacks… just let him go for once."

Armed with a wooden spoon, she marched toward the attic steps, a woman on an obvious mission. And it certainly wasn't to bring aid or comfort. "I'm just going to talk to him."

He finally grabbed hold of her arm and tried to pull the spoon free, but she kept dodging him. "Then what do you need with that, huh? You're just going to end up hitting him with it."

She glared at him critically. "And so what if I do? He'd deserve it."

Finally grasping hold of the kitchen utensil, he pulled it away from her. "You were the one who asked me to get him let out of the psych ward. Lets just forget about the part where you asked me to put him IN the psych ward. You were crying, saying you swore on a stack of Bibles to never make him eat veg ever again. Now you're going to go up there and start something with him. Just settle down for a moment and think about what you really want."

Her eyes met his, and she stopped for the first time, perhaps to really consider her actions. They softened and tears leaked down her cheeks, taking mascara with them. "I want Rose back."

Instinctively, he pulled Jackie to him, sighing as he kissed her. "I know. Slapping him silly won't bring her back to you, will it?"

Jackie's lips pressed together. "No. But it'll make me feel better." She looked behind her, at the attic door on the other end of the corridor. "And maybe he'll stop talking to her like she can hear him. And it'll stop him scribbling on every free surface. He's making me crazy, Pete. If I have to listen to him any more…I'm going to go just as batty as he is. And then what? Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't Rose be here with us?"

The back of his fingers brushed her cheek. It was really the first time she'd expressed it out-loud, and it seemed to be a big moment for her. He wondered what would come of it. "I don't know, love. Why anything? Would you have preferred I not have saved him?"

Glancing behind her again at the door, Jackie froze. "I—maybe—no. No. But he's getting weirder. And the weirder he gets…the more it…" she stopped and took a deep breath then swallowed some emotion down. "The more I can't listen to it. Maybe he SHOULD go. He's right. He's never going to fit in here, so maybe he should just…go somewhere. Some place else."

Pete knew she really didn't want that. Otherwise she wouldn't have fought with him for over half a year to get him out of his own head and his own misery, and back into circulation. She wouldn't have forced him into gainful employment. She'd worked too hard on the Doctor to just kick him out over one thing. Especially given the general pain in the arse he was most of the time. It was like quitting with the finish line in sight.

He rubbed both of her arms. "He thinks he's on to something. Maybe we should just let him work on it. Even if he isn't on to something, it's keeping him busy, ya? So really, there's no harm in it, either way. If it bothers you to listen to him, then don't. If you want to leave for a few days, do that. I can handle one grieving Time Lord."

The way she looked at him… it was like he was asking her to leave her sick child.

Which sealed it for him—she needed time away. He was checking her into a spa—for her own good. He patiently kissed her forehead. "Jacks…he's a handful." Of course, sometimes, she was too. "You have done everything that could be expected of you and more. It's time to let him fend for himself for a few days. I don't want you exhausting yourself again." The last was more of an order than anything else. "You ran yourself ragged over him, and what did it get you?"

Jackie looked down at her bump, hand rubbing it in some sort of afterthought. "It's not good for her, is it?"

Pete smiled and began tugging Jackie toward their bedroom. "Not really. She needs her mum in one piece."

Closing her eyes against the crashing, breaking noise above their heads, Jackie allowed herself to be lead away.

XYZ

When Jack ventured back into the TARDIS, he was a little alarmed at what he found. He'd walked through the quiet ship, looking for signs of life. Not hearing anything, he made his way back to a familiar bedroom, since Rose had seemed to have claimed it for her own as of late. Instead of finding Rose asleep in the bed (which he dreaded as much as he hoped for), he found her sitting on the floor, large pieces of paper spread out in front of her. From the doorway he looked them over. It was a series of symbols he was familiar with, but not one he could actually read, or that the TARDIS would translate.

Things were changing—and they were changing fast.

"Rose?" he began cautiously, not even sure how to begin approaching the situation. They'd just entered a whole new level of weird in the story of the box, the cylinder and the little wooden blocks. "What is all that?"

She looked at him as if he was stupid. "What does it look like?"

He stepped into the room, striding over the large sheet of drawing paper nearest the door. "I want to hear what you think it is."

Rose stopped scratching away with her thick artist's pencil and sat up straight. Rubbing her neck, she looked at him critically. "If you're going to tell me I'm crazy, just…keep it to yourself, ok? He can see me. I'm leaving a message for him."

Jack had to play this cool. It was entirely essential. "Ok. How do you know he can see you?" he kept his tone even. If she thought he was even the least bit incredulous, she'd kick him out of the ship again. HER ship. "So I can help," he added to give increased credulity to what he was saying.

Oh he really needed to have Gwen talk to her—and soon—this was getting just too out of the realm of what they could understand without some sort of scientific investigation. And it looked to him like she had no idea just how significant this whole thing was. Looking over the spread pages covering nearly all of the floor, he wondered how long she'd been working on this. He'd only been gone for an hour. Could she have done all of these intricate designs in that short amount of time?

She went back to her drawing. They weren't scribbles, either they were the most well-hand-drawn geometric symbols he'd ever seen—without the aid of a ruler or other device. It was amazing to him that she had the hand and eye for it. "He left a note for me. He has a box too. It's his box—he made it. So I'm telling him what we have, and where we found it. We're getting there, Jack. I just know it."

Crouching down beside her, he looked over the series of interlocking symbols she was scraping elegantly into the unstarched paper. "What's this mean?" Where had she learned this?

Groaning, Rose held up the paper. "Don't tell me you're illiterate now, too."

"Rose, that isn't any language I can read."

Putting the paper back down, she glared at him in disgust. "What the hell are you talking about?"

He picked up the page, trying to point the odd symbols out to her. "Hon…I think that's the Doctor's language."

TBC…


	13. Chapter 13

Well, that was certainly… different. Rose had done as he'd asked, and had left notes for him. But it was definitely not what he had been expecting. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Every surface was covered in large sheets of paper. Every sheet of paper was covered in his native language. Granted it looked as if it had been written by the hand of a child, but it was legible. And detailed. There weren't two boxes. There were three. When he got to that part of the account, he didn't know what to make of it. Three boxes, and she had two scroll cylinders. He had to leave her a note and tell her where the key was for the scrolls.

Even though he was incorporeal, he tried to step around the sheets covering the floor as he walked over to the bed. Rose was asleep, curled on top of the blankets, the pencil still clutched in one hand and a half-made character on the paper beside her. Her account made his hastily scrawled plans on the back of a food wrapper look childish.

It was amazing, really—the whole account of how she became the defacto head of Torchwood, finding Jack, the artifacts…all of it was there. It was interesting how she strategically left out the part where she and Jack were now…so much more closely acquainted than they had been the last time they'd been in each other's company.

It was weird, watching her sleep like this. She wasn't wearing makeup. He'd probably never seen her without mascara on in the entire time he'd known her. Her hair was shorter too. It thinned around her neck and hugged it, and he wondered what it'd be like to put his fingers through it. Not because he… well, for any particular reason. He just wondered.

What would have been his hands, if he had hands, reached out from somewhere in his mind to touch her. What had she done to herself? He couldn't believe that she'd spent the last seven months studying his language, or that the TARDIS would have changed her programming to suddenly start translating that for her to provide some sort of answer key.

So what was happening?

It was a bit on the annoying side—every time he found an answer, he found two more questions to go with.

Until he could think up something brilliant…he decided to just watch her sleep.

XYZ 

Well, this was boring.

Watching the Doctor meditate was right up there with watching the kettle boil—it didn't happen if you watched it, and he wasn't going to snap out of it, just because she wanted him to. He didn't move, he didn't even breathe, so much as she could tell. But it was easy to guess by the posture what he was up to.

There weren't any other notes laying around for her, and he obviously wasn't going to do anything interesting…

So she began wandering through the house.

It was nice, if terribly large. She remembered some of it from her one trip to that universe, but she'd never been in the upper levels. The library was enormous. There were books missing from all of the shelves, and it didn't take much to guess that those were the books stacked all over the attic floor.

There were only a few more rooms that looked lived-in near there. The rest had the untouched sense of a hotel suite, despite the photos and personal touches meant to make the room look more alive than it actually was. Growing bored with the game, she wandered like a restless ghost toward the sounds coming from a room at the other end of the corridor.

"Well, I'm just saying. Maybe you should call me if anything happens." Her mother's voice. It had been so long since she'd heard it—she had actually come to miss 'that tone.' The one that said she wasn't impressed, and you really ought to just do what she asked of you.

Someone sighed. "Jackie, it's a day and a half. He will survive for a day and a half. I will survive for a day and a half. Everyone will live. The world will continue turning. And that's why I'm not letting you take your mobile."

Stopping in the doorway, she watched her mother packing a bag, back to the doorway. "You're a mean man, Peter Tyler," Jackie informed him. "What if someone needs to get hold of me."

Pete was holding a red phone almost tauntingly, and then slid it into his coat pocket. It was so normal and…domestic. "Thirty six hours. Can you stay disconnected from the goings on of one piddly little Time Lord for that long? I bet he doesn't even come out of the attic while you're gone. Then won't you feel silly, sitting by the phone, waiting for some word that he's jumped out another window or blown something up or whatever it is he does that gets you so worked up. You need to relax. Or you're going to end up ill again."

Her mother sighed, zipping the overnight bag. "But you'll look after him?"

Pete opened his newspaper. "Goodbye, Jackie. Have a nice weekend."

Jackie turned toward the door and Rose got her first glimpse of her mother's new shape. Well, she and Pete certainly hadn't wasted any time! And her mother looked good for it, too. Her skin looked healthier than it had in years, and she had a glow about her that belied the tired grief in her eyes. She was dressed in a smart pair of light blue slacks and a fitted jacket which buttoned fashionably above her baby bump.

Surprisingly, Rose didn't feel as if she'd been replaced. It was a rather curious sensation, and mostly Rose wondered why she didn't feel that way. Probably because of the sadness still in her mother's eyes, and the almost obsessive concern Jackie was showing for the Doctor.

Her mother turned back, finger pointed in the air, as if she was about to give Pete Tyler a piece of her mind, but she saw that he was fully invested in his paper (or pretending to be) and simply made her way out of the room, past Rose and toward the large winding stair case at the end of the next hall.

When he heard her wide heels clapping on the steps, Pete put the paper down and walked to the doorway, listening intently until he was certain she'd left the house. Rolling his eyes, he pulled out his own phone, a silver and grey model, and began dialing. Rose was not surprised that mobile telephones were now the fashion and the ear pods were gone…at least in this household. Neither even had a wireless headset.

Wandering back to his oversized chair, and the newspaper, Pete sat back down. "Yeah. I finally got her out of the house. I want to get someone in here. Actually I want a few someones in here. First, I want to find out if he's dangerously nuts, or if he's quirky-nuts. If he's only quirky-nuts, I want someone to go through his things and figure out just how plausible his little theory is. If he's dangerously nuts, I want him out of here and away from Jackie."

He listened to someone on the other end for a moment. Rose tried to get closer, to see if there was anything she could overhear…but she couldn't quite make it out.

Pete bobbed his head thoughtfully a few times. "Yeah. I know. She's done her best for him, and it's wearing on her last nerve and running her ragged. Something has to change. I thought it would be bringing him into Torchwood, but it seems like it's just made things more…" he searched for the word for a moment. "Desperate." He sighed.

It wasn't that Rose could blame him, really. She knew how the Doctor was at the best of times, and he hardly came off as the most rational of fellows. There was also Rose's own experience in trying to convince Jack, Ianto and the rest of her people (who were only being informed of the situation on a need-to-know basis) that she wasn't mad or over-tired or under-slept, or whatever it was that they liked to excuse her behaviour upon.

Still. She felt like she should warn him somehow.

The sheer joy of being able to communicate in any fashion suddenly wore thin, and the whole thing seemed very much like passing notes on torn pieces of ruled paper in school.

But he was the Doctor. He'd be able to handle Pete just doing his job. He'd been in a lot worse of scrapes and had gotten himself out, right? Of course, every time she went and assumed that he'd be ok, he'd find some new way to dig himself in just a little bit deeper. Perhaps Rose should call it a 'courtesy warning.' Then if he got himself into a mess with Pete, it would be entirely of his own making.

XYZ

"…And then your mother went completely crazy on me. Completely psychotic, asking me if I wanted pickled cucumbers on my sandwich. I mean, really? Who puts cucumbers on a sandwich? They certainly don't where I come from. Of course, they didn't eat sandwiches either but that's not the point. You don't know how bizarre this world is, Rose. They put dill on everything. And peppers, red ones, instead of tomatoes. Pizza's made with pepper sauce. I don't think I've ever seen a tomato on this world. How tragic is that? Tomatoes are good. That's all I want. I want to live in a universe with tomatoes. That's not too much to ask, is it? OH yeah, and for your mother to stop feeding me. And criticising the way I eat. It's always something. Eat your oatmeal, use a fork for your salad, don't bore holes into your meat with the back of your spoon…"

Rose could hear him, but she couldn't quite make her body work yet. She was still at that stage of sleep where nothing wanted to obey her. It's how she knew this was real.

Real…how strange her concept of reality had become lately.

It was like he was sitting on the bed, his voice was so close. Right next to her. Like…if she could get her body to do as it was told, she could reach out and take his hand. Or sit up and plant a kiss on his lips so he'd shut up, if only out of shock and surprise.

Oh to see the look on his face, if she did that…"SO I told her who was boss. I said, madam, I am a lord of time. If I want to eat steak with a spoon, then I will!" He chuckled. "No. I just said yes, ma'am, sorry, ma'am, I won't do it again, ma'am. Cos she's completely around the bend, your mum. She's nuttier than a fruitcake. The bigger she gets, the crazier she gets, too. Last night I saw her putting mustard on ice cream. I mean, what did that ice cream ever do to her…"

Smiling, Rose stretched, her eyes still closed. "Who put mayonnaise on his peanut butter sandwich?"

"It was only that one time! It tasted like meat! You wanted…Wait. You can hear me?"

Rubbing her nose, she yawned. "Yeah. Woke me up, you did. 'S ok. I was tired of watching you--" she opened her eyes as she reached for him. The space was empty. "Meditate."

Sitting up, she looked around the room in disappointment. If only she hadn't opened her eyes and woke herself completely. But this…this whatever it was, it was getting stronger if she could hear him in her waking state. They were so close to something—on the verge of figuring out what this was all about. Just a little more information, a clue or a hint…

Was that too much to ask for? It was all so frustrating, suddenly. Looking around the room at the sheets of paper, and the half-finished page on the bed next to her, she wondered why this whole communication thing had to be so…pony express. Not to mention odd and ill-timed.

Sliding her legs over the side of the bed, she let out another yawn. What the hell was she talking about? A month ago, she had nothing. She'd been completely alone in this world, without her mum and without the Doctor. Now she had Jack, had seen her mother, and could see the Doctor and communicate with him, in a fashion, albeit an inefficient one.

The universe had certainly done a number on her life recently. But she was still uniquely blessed. Perhaps she'd better start acting like it.

XYZ

Upon seeing him sitting on the edge of her desk, Rose threw her arms around Jack's neck and shoved her tongue down his throat, onlookers be damned.

After several breathless moments, she pulled her head away from his, grinning like a mad-woman. It spilled over into laughter when she saw the look in his eye, like he was about to call for the men in the white coats. And his speechlessness. Jack was never speechless.

She nodded to Ianto and the woman with the dark hair on the other side of the desk, filling up all the free space in her broom cupboard. "Hello. I've just had the best nap of my life."

Jack blinked a few times, then rubbed his lower lip. "Obviously. What's gotten into you?"

She shrugged, innocently clasping her hands behind her back, twisting back and forth like an antsy school girl. With a magenta jacket that matched the blush in her cheeks and her hair tucked behind her ears, she quite looked like one, too. "I'm sorry I kicked you out of the TARDIS, Jack. She does want you to come back inside. Her spatial flight stabiliser is jammed and it's giving her a horrible tummy ache."

Unable to resist the gushing urge bubbling up within her, she suddenly wrapped him in a tight hug. "Oh god, Jack…"

And then she was sobbing.

XYZ

Jack looked from Ianto to Gwen innocuously, then wrapped his arms around Rose. "Hey now," he whispered. "What's this?"

There was an almost imperceptible sound of brushed fabric as Ianto stiffened in his navy pinstripe suit, but he looked to Jack, his eyes seeming to ask if he should get someone from medical, or something of the like. Jack shook his head no. Even Gwen looked like she felt like she should be doing something, but she just crossed her arms over her chest and waited for her boss to show some sort of leadership that had been somehow lacking in his dealing of the situation thus far.

Damn, the woman's dark Welsh eyes were judgmental, Jack thought. But it was better to just give in to their seeming scolding, than to risk getting some new evil glare that he wouldn't know what to do with. So he put his hands on Rose's cheeks, and raised her head so that she was no longer sobbing hysterically into his chest. "Sweetheart…what is it?"

Her hands dug into the material of his sky-blue shirt right above the waist. She was twisting and tugging so hard that he was legitimately afraid that she'd tear the shirt off of his body, right at the seams. And while the Chippendale method of removing clothing was hot in most circumstances he'd really rather not go into it right then and there.

She sniffled, trying to get the sobs under control, but it didn't stop the hot tears from running down her burning red cheeks. "Can't you feel it, Jack?"

"Feel what?" Before he'd even responded fully, he'd managed to catch Ianto's eye again. Maybe they DID need someone from medical. "What should I be feeling, sweetheart?"

Letting go of her death grip on the shirt with one hand, she passed her sleeve across her face, pulling away loads of moisture. "It's all around us, Jack. It's everywhere. And you can't even feel it, can you?"

Ianto began making his way to the broom cupboard door silently and slowly. It was probably for the best, really. Maybe they could sedate her, and maybe while she was unconscious, they could run some more tests without her constant and nagging interference. She had obviously tripped over into hysteria brought about by monomania, exhaustion, and whatever the hell else was going on with her right now that Jack wasn't even sure he wanted to venture guesses into.

He brushed her cheeks with his thumbs, pulling away still more tears. The whites of her eyes were more of a red, but there was something molten about the area around her pupils. They were liquid and alive and on fire, more of a sharp hazel than her normal brown. He wasn't sure if it was just the redness bringing out other tones, or if it was something else entirely. Somehow he sensed that he shouldn't take the chance. "No, honey. I don't know what it is. You're going to have to tell me."

Slowly, the shuddering breaths became more steady and deep and reliable. She looked apologetically to Ianto who had his hand on the door, and Gwen, who was simply watching the display with a sort of sad fascination. "Sorry. I'm not usually so… you should know, Jack. You should be able to feel it. It's the same thing that's in you. It's glowing all around us and it's holding on to us, and it's telling me something, Jack. Oh God… it's telling me something." She smiled and it wavered, not due to insincerity but due to her own state. "I heard him. I heard the Doctor. When I woke up to reach for him, he was gone, but he was there. And then I got up. And then I went to the console room to say good morning to the TARDIS…and that's when she said about the tummy ache, by the way…but anyhow ever since then, since she told me that, I've heard it. It's golden and on fire and like a song. And it's telling me everything's alright."

She put her head on his chest, and he held her tight, not sure what to expect. "I know. Everything is going to be alright. We're working on it. And we're close to an answer."

Looking up at him, Rose shook her head. "Not that it will be alright. It's that it IS alright. Everything's the way it's supposed to be. Can you believe that? Everything's playing out the way it was intended."

TBC…


	14. Chapter 14

They were out there, talking about her again. Outside the cafeteria. She could see their shadows on either side of the doorway. But she just knew they were there.

Gwen Cooper smiled before inviting herself to sit with Rose. "This is better than Cardiff. We have a kitchenette." The effervescent and overtly perky woman set a bright orange tray down in front of Rose, sitting in the seat across from her at the long narrow table. "So have you known Jack long?"

Rose continued to stare at the play of shadows on the industrial tile floor as she bit into a piece of fried potato. Chewing thoughtfully, she wiped her hand on a napkin, watching the darkness on the floor shift and Jack edge uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Forever and a day. They think I'm crazy, you know." That's what Gwen Cooper was there for. She was supposed to tease information out of Rose that Rose had not given up to Jack already.

But what could she tell Jack that he'd accept? Nothing. She'd seen how things would play out. In the past. The past that hadn't happened yet…How things were to play out, if this universe was to still have its Time Lord to watch over it.

She would fall away from him. He would scream, she would be too stunned to scream until she hit Pete's arms and ended up in that other place. Her hands would slam against a barren white wall until they were red. She would hear his voice and follow it. She would cry, saying goodbye.

She'd never remember frantically making love with Jack, seeing the Doctor or talking to the TARDIS, eating these overdone chips. It would all be gone, and she wouldn't understand what had happened until much later, when she was desperate and alone. Much more alone than she was now, without Ianto to urge her to eat vegetables and drink less caffeine, or Jack who would kill her with kindness if she let him.

Rose wasn't meant to have her ribs crushed by bony arms as they swung her in exhilaration at being alive ever again. Maybe by him, but not by those arms. He'd regenerate before she saw him again. Everything would fall away and she would be walking along that lonely beach before she saw her old blue box again, waiting there for her in the cold wet sand.

She'd be so very alone by then. This would only be a taste of the isolation to come. Never staying in one place very long, never keeping a job that was fulfilling. She couldn't be too good at it, or make too many advances. She knew she'd never quite figure out fitting in, because he never had. Jack would have beaten them at that game. The difference would be…she'd have no means of running away or escape, the Doctor did.

Perhaps it would be better to not remember this. Especially when Gwen Cooper looked at her with such sympathy. As though she agreed with Jack and Ianto's assessment of her facilities. "Jack thinks very highly of you." The other woman smiled as she opened a cup of yogurt. "He never lets us forget just how far you've come and just how pathetic we are in comparison."

Rose managed to look away from the door and actually smiled sincerely. "From shop girl to region head of a shadow organisation in the blink of an eye." She'd eventually spend six months in an asylum for no other reason than ennui and finger painting being fun.

There'd be a shop job among others, two failed marriages, a bullet wound in her back that would leave a star-shaped scar. When she saw the Doctor again, she would be quite changed. That was how it was supposed to be. "Jack…we had some interesting times. It was always the three of us, getting into trouble. Getting out of trouble. He once set up a cave man with a big boned city girl. I'm not making that up."

Even though she was smiling, and it was a happy memory, there was something distant in her voice. "He had a way with my ship—the Doctor's ship. "Whose ship was it, any more? She couldn't imagine leaving it. Forgetting would be for the best, because the mere thought of leaving the TARDIS made her anxious and caused her palms to sweat. Who knew what the actual act of separation would cause? "It wasn't the three of us. It was the four of us, now that I look back. It only ever felt like the three of us." Till now, till she could hear what the TARDIS was thinking. Now every memory seemed to be filled with her presence, as if the awareness of the ship had always been with Rose. "Jack is very shrewd, setting you on me." The last was a distant afterthought.

Wiping her mouth with the coarse paper napkin, Gwen Cooper took a moment to swallow. More like gathering her thoughts, if Rose had to venture a guess… but the woman's pause was almost natural. "I wanted to help. That's all I want to do. Jack's a little frustrated. He wants to help, but you're holding back information from him."

And that was the other shoe being dropped. At least Gwen Cooper was honest and forthright. Rose had learned a few things in the last half a year or so about unclear motives and dishonest sentiments.

Rose just didn't know how to respond. "I'm sorry I lost it earlier. It was just a little…overwhelming, emotionally. I shouldn't have put that on Jack or you or anyone else." Especially poor Ianto who had looked ready to sedate her out of desperation. "And I care about Jack. More than anyone on this world. But…he can't try to stop this. I know it's what he'll want to do. But he just can't. Things are bigger than either of us now. They're bigger than the Doctor too." The Doctor. Another soon-to-be casualty in this universal realignment. As much as she wanted to tell him, she knew that she couldn't. This had suddenly become a need-to-know environment. Basically no one else needed to know. No one else needed the burden of the knowledge of what it had taken or would take to set things right.

XYZ

The only conclusion to the conversation was that there was no conclusion. They had no idea what to do with Rose. No, that was an unfair statement, Jack thought as he walked back into the cafeteria, massaging his neck. That meant that there was something they could do, without going so far as to relieve her of her position.

And who really wanted to get their eyeballs clawed out by an unhappy Rose Tyler? The list of people was pretty short.

She was sitting with Gwen, actually engaging in conversation. Jack knew he was right to bring the newest member of his team for this. Gwen had a way with people that the rest of them currently lacked. He used to be such an insufferable flirt, where had all that energy gone? Oh, to be a hundred and ten again. Those were the days.

Back before he had to start being responsible and in charge of others. Which, quite frankly, sucked. He was trying to do this whole thing all diplomatic-like with Rose, when all he wanted to do was have a knock-down drag out that resulted in her being tied to a bed for her own good until they were done running every test known to man and scanning her within an inch of her life. It'd certainly be more fulfilling too.

Ianto had made a few monitoring recommendations, and they'd both figured out a few ways to continue working on the artifacts to see if there was anything else they could determine. At this point, any small glimmer of a clue as to what was happening would be appreciated.

Sitting next to Gwen, he smiled at Rose. Glancing at his teammate, he caught sight of the haunted look on her face, her lips rounded with surprise and her eyes wide open.

"Enjoying the pudding? The tapioca isn't bad. I'm not sure about the chocolate, though. How is it?" Small talk was an art he hadn't had to put into practice in ages.

Rose's brown-cum-hazel eyes slowly raised until they were practically shooting electricity into his own. "They're all going to turn on you."

Jack blinked, wondering just what the hell one was supposed to say to that. "What?"

Blinking, Rose continued as if this was the most normal conversation in the world. "Owen Harper shoots you in the head. Even Ianto betrays you in the end. Miss Cooper's boyfriend… oh all the blood. All that blood, in the basement of your secret little bace, in the deepest darkest parts of the Hub. The Hub… with your flying monster and that rift manipulator. All these things…"

Startled by her account, he grabbed her forearm. "Rose…"

The spoon slid out of her hand. When it hit the tray, it flicked pudding onto the table with an oozing splat. "Then you're killed by Satan. You're killed, Jack. By Satan, even though we've already killed him… You won't like the answer the Doctor gives you. It's about me and what I've done, and where I will be. There's so much you won't like. Martha Jones…she seems like a nice girl. Don't be afraid to let her know that, the way you let me know. It's ok, you know. To let people know that. It makes them feel better about things. All the stars can go out in the sky, but if they know they're an ok sort… it makes things better."

Picking up the spoon, Rose shoved it into her mouth, barely swallowing down a reluctant chuckle with the pudding. "But you won't remember any of this," she finished. "I can still tell you. Cos you won't remember any of this."

Jack nudged Gwen. "Step into my office," he muttered, not bothering to care how obvious it must have looked to Rose. He wasn't entirely sure she was with them at the moment. Of course, he was losing faith in the 'Rose has gone completely crazy' theory too. Truthfully, he'd been kind of hoping it was 'just' that. That the boxes were putting off some sort of radiation that was making her stark-raving mad. They could fix that.

When they were a few tables away, he turned Gwen away from prying eyes. "What's going on?"

The woman shifted uncomfortably. "I really don't like the things she's saying, Jack. She's talking about things that haven't happened as if they're going to happen. But in the past. Like she's going to somehow go back and change it."

He nodded. He had been starting to get that impression. "And she thinks if she tells me, I'm going to stop her. And she's damned right about that. No offence or anything, but I'm not all that fond of the part where Owen shoots me and your boyfriend ends up dead, if that's OK."

Gwen looked over her shoulder at Rose, who was absently pushing peas around on her plate. "So what do we do?"

Sighing, Jack shook his head. "I don't know. But she's talking like she's seeing what could be, or what wasn't. She's writing in the language of the Doctor's people and generally acting a little weirder every time you look around…Which is all Time Lord territory. Which means… well… she isn't going to like what it means."

Swallowing back a frown, he touched his headset and turned away from Gwen slightly. "Ianto… that thing we were talking about before? Yeah. Now's a good time," he offered casually then shut off his headset. "I'm going to need you to run interference," he informed Gwen as he started back towards the table. Get her started talking about something. Anything."

Jack sat down next to Rose and Gwen took her place across from them again. He tried to keep it casual, as if there was no reason, other than Rose's friendship, for why he'd plop himself next to her.

Gwen tried to feign interest in her food again, but it wasn't really working. She looked up at Rose, who was still pushing the peas around with a vacant look about her. "So. Jack tells me the two of you used to travel together. Did you go any place nice?"

Rose glanced up at her as if she should have been kidding or something. "To Cardiff once. Then to the end of the Time War. It's over, you know. I ended it."

Jack eyed Ianto as he quietly crossed the empty cafeteria. He slowly lowered his hands from under his chin, trying not to draw attention to himself.

Licking her lips, Rose continued at Gwen's encouragement. "It's over. But the Daleks are coming back. They always come back. Martha's a nice girl. She stands up to them."

As unassumingly as possible, Jack put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. "Martha… Her last name's Jones?"

"Martha Jones. Long-suffering Martha Jones. Be nice to her, Jack."

He kept his arm around her and smiled. "I promise. I'll be nice to her. When I meet her. In the past."

Her eyes locked with his, and he almost felt like a ghost had passed through him. "Jack, don't try to stop me. It's for the best. You'll see. This universe will have him back."

With his free hand, he stroked her cheek. "I know you believe that, honey. And I'm sorry for this." Glancing up at Ianto, he squeezed her arms down at her sides so she couldn't struggle as the man injected something with a thin needle into her neck.

Unfortunately, it didn't have the desired effect. Instead of sedating her, it made her furious. She screamed, nearly piercing his ear drums, and kicked out, trying to push herself away from Jack. Even though he wasn't expecting it, he was ready for it. He squeezed her arms even tighter. "Rose, this is for your own good. You won't tell me what's happening, so we need to find out." He ignored the critical glares from Gwen. "A little help here, huh?"

Rose began thrashing back and forth like a fish on dry land, nearly tearing his arms out of the sockets as he tried to keep hold of her. She finally managed to clip him above the brow bone with her own head, and he almost lost hold until Gwen grabbed her head, trying to shush Rose's screaming. And she did calm down, for just a second. And that was all Ianto needed to get a second needle under her skin.

Her struggling slowed. Tears streamed down her cheeks as Gwen stroked her hair. Eventually her head came to rest on Jack's shoulder and he brushed the tears off of her cheek. "Honey, I'm not going to let you change the past. I'm not going to let you take his place just because you think this universe needs him more than you." He kissed her forehead. "I need you more."

Eyelids sliding closed, she let out a sigh. "You can't change it, Jack. You can't change…" The rest of her breath escaped, and she was asleep.

Jack looked up at Ianto. "Good job. It shouldn't have taken that much to drop her though. That has me worried."

Before he'd even finished the thought, Gwen felt for a pulse. "Jack… there's something wrong."

Ianto was off like a shot then. He didn't wait to find out what it was, he simply sprung into motion, no doubt to alert the medical team that they had a problem. They hadn't notified them before of their little plan simply because the less people that knew, the less it was likely that Rose would become privy to their planned betrayal.

Jack's hand went to Rose's neck. It was regular. That was the thing that was worrying. It wasn't the rhythm of a human heart; it was something consistent and steady. Sliding his hand along her jaw line, he felt for the pulse on the other side of her neck. This was faster but also steady. "Shit," he whispered, putting his thumb on the other side. There it was, beneath his fingertips…two separate but distinct pulses.

Anger building up inside of him, he looked around at the empty expanse of the cafeteria as Gwen put a hand under each side of Rose's jaw to see what he had felt. "I don't know if you're here, Doctor. But Rose seems to think you can hear her. I don't care what's going on. But whatever you're doing here, whatever think you're doing… stop it. She isn't trading places with you. You're special, but you're not that damned special, do you hear me?" His lip trembled once as he tried to hold back the urge to scream at nothing. "I don't care if her family's there. I don't care if you think it's a fair trade…what you're turning her into. You stop it. Or else when you come back here… I'll kill you myself."

It was hard to keep himself in check. Somehow he managed to lock his jaw and swallow back his venom enough to kiss Rose's sleeping forehead. She was worth fighting for, and he'd fight for her. Even if he was fighting the Doctor…or the TARDIS or the hands of Time and Fate to do it. "You let her go," he whispered. "I don't know what she's turning into… but stop it."

Gwen touched his shoulder. " Jack," she said gently, pointing to the approaching medical team. He looked away from them and sniffed, trying to keep the wetness out of his eyes.

He couldn't have anything, could he? She was going to be taken away from him. Worse, still—it sounded like she'd be the catalyst of this rewrite. This wasn't right. That was the only thing he knew. Jack didn't give a damn if it seemed like some easy or brilliant solution to the problem, trading places, but history had already been written.

He wasn't going to let her rewrite it for the sake of one man who probably didn't even know what he had in Rose Tyler.

TBC…


	15. Chapter 15

He hated explaining things to people. It's why he avoided it whenever possible. First it seemed to take forever, then he'd have to find ever increasingly more simplistic ways of explaining things. This was why he'd liked Rose. Whatever explanation he'd given had been enough. No need to go into further detail. And if he wasn't in the mood to explain, she usually didn't press. Perfect companion, she was.

These ladies…would not make good companions. First of all, they were tag-teaming him with the questions. The first, tall with chestnut hair and those rather attractive librarian glasses could have been a model. In fact, she should have been. It would have saved him the trouble of the constant questions about the box and what it did and a bunch of rather clever things about trans-dimensional travel that she couldn't possibly understand the answer for.

The second he minded a lot less. Just your average mousey-doctory type of psychiatrist, asking him how he felt about the box, and trans-dimensional travel and Jackie Tyler and spinach and his mother and her mother and fifty thousand other things he didn't have answers to.

So he just folded his hands and let them rest on the kitchen table, staring back at them, trying to swallow back his impatience with the people going through his things in the attic. He didn't need to see it and he could barely hear it but he knew it was going on, and it was making him crazy. "Look. I don't expect you to understand. Human beings have teeny tiny itty bitty little brains and they don't even use all of those itty bitty things. It's nothing against you lot or anything. I'm just saying…you can't comprehend."

"Explain it to us," the mousy one said, leaning closer to him from across the table. The implication was clear: he'd better try, or there'd be… unfortunate consequences.

He rubbed his eyes. Fine. If you can't impress them with brilliance, bedazzle them with bullshit. "The box exists in three places at once, sort of. It also exists in three distinct times and places, that happen to be intersecting at the moment. For some reason, Rose has the box twice. She dug one out of the ground on a schoolyard. It seemed to have somehow been there, and undisturbed, since before the Romans came to town. Which you don't know anything about because the Romans never made it any further than Burgundy in this universe. Trust me, the Romans were very impressive over there. But the really impressive thing about digging this thing out of a schoolyard is that it's been missed for that long."

Sitting back in the stiff chair he'd been occupying for the last hour and a half, he prepared for the really impressive part of this tale. "Somehow no one's managed in two thousand-some-odd years to not dig this thing up, when entire civilizations have risen and fallen with this thing still ten feet deep in the ground. That's not just impressive—it's improbable. Even if the thing had a perception filter somehow associated with it, which it doesn't. I know because I built it. But the odds of just… stumbling upon it accidentally with a shovel or a bulldozer are so great it's just… impossible to think that they wouldn't have found it already. "

Both women folded their hands in front of him, giving him an identical critical look, instead of being in awe of the facts. Humans really bothered him sometimes. This was bedazzling stuff, dammit! "Go on," the shoulda-been-a-supermodel urged.

Shifting to find a more comfortable position for his backside, he sighed. "And the thing looks like hell. I haven't seen the actual box, but Rose left out some photos for me, and it looks like it's been through a couple of wars or something. Which is good. Because it means that at some point in my relative future, the box takes a trip back to the past. Which means my TARDIS doesn't die, and I get off this…rock. No offence. But I hate your reality and all the people in it. Except for that really nice girl in accounting who knocked on the door and asked if I wanted coffee, my one and only day at Torchwood. She's OK, and if I ever get out of here, she can come with me. But I don't have her name. And I didn't open the door so I don't know what she looked like. What I'm trying to say is… YAAY! Eventually I get to stop being here! I just need to figure out all the pieces of the puzzle."

And escape the inquisition. Which he wouldn't do if Pete Tyler had his way. What'd he done to Pete? Well, besides getting into row after row with Pete's crazy wife in Pete's presence. And writing on the walls of Pete's finished attic. But he thought they'd had a bond or something. Guess not.

Well, he'd had enough. He'd appeased Pete for long enough. "Just tell me one thing, ladies. If you will. You work for Torchwood, right? You've read my file. You know I'm not exactly what you'd call…human. Even in a loose sense of the word. I'm almost a thousand years old. I've seen the death of your planet, your solar system. I've been to more planets than you can count or comprehend. I've turned into an entirely different person on nine occasions. I can see all of time and space. I AM Merlin."

They seemed to be waiting for him to continue, their eyes open and jaws dropped. GOOD. He finally had their attention. So he continued. "With that in mind…how is your psycho-analysis of me going? Do you think you can determine my level of sanity or the level of threat I pose? Because I've killed more people in a single afternoon than there have ever been humans on Earth to this point. I'd say the threat level is pretty high, but if I was going to do something, I'd have done it by now. Including bludgeoning Jackie Tyler to death with her own cucumber sandwich," the last was said loud enough, hopefully for Pete to hear.

"That in mind…" he slid the chair back and stood up. "Ladies, I thank you for your time, but we're done here." It had been fun, for all of thirty seconds, but he'd had his fill. He had to get back to work.

XYZ

Jack couldn't look at the monitors any more. His eyes were burning, and he was too distracted. He didn't notice Owen had stopped talking until the room had gone entirely still for a minute. "Sorry. What?"

Owen tossed his pen on the keyboard in front of him. "You're the one that wanted us to run every test in the book. The least you could do is pay attention to the results."

Clenching his eyes closed, Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to clear away some of the tiredness. He was the one that had started this. "Sorry. Can I get the short version?"

Leaning back in his chair, Owen laced his fingers in front of him. "Short of it—brain activity I haven't seen before. Plus all the other biological changes and accommodations for whatever this is. Point is—she's not human any more. She's something we've never seen before."

Jack leaned against the wall of the small room Owen had set up shop in. "I have." His head slammed against the wall. "Two hearts, hyper-efficient respiratory system… ability to 'see around corners' for want of a better term. Time Lord. She'd now be the last of the

Doctor's kind in this universe."

Picking up the pen again, Owen began chewing thoughtfully on the end as he flipped through scan results again. "You said he's doing this?"

The scowl Jack gave told more than his words could. "If I interpret what she was saying before we sedated her correctly…he's going to somehow swap their places."

"And you won't let that happen."

Jack shook his head. "Not if I can help it."

At one point he'd been fully prepared to step aside when Rose and the Doctor were reunited. Jack had always known he'd been the third wheel in that relationship, that the Doctor is who she'd really wanted, and he'd just been a comfort and a friend. He'd truly had that altruistic intent. But now he wasn't sure he could ever willingly let her go.

The Doctor had always had a special charisma that had inspired loyalty and trust, maybe even instant friendship. But Rose Tyler had something else entirely—there was some precocious spark, some light inside of her that inspired a more powerful force: love.

He saw it in Ianto's eyes every time the other man looked at her. It was why this sad little crew of what remained of Torchwood One were working night and day to find out what was becoming of their woefully under-qualified defacto leader. It was why he'd gone back on his earlier promise to himself to just let Rose go.

Rose Tyler was worth fighting for. Whether she wanted him to fight for her not.

"Can I propose a new theory?"

Jack looked down at Owen, wondering what could possibly change the situation. "What?"

Owen bit one more time on the edge of the pen with his back teeth, then pointed at the door with it, in the general direction of the room Rose was being held, still sedated, in. "This Time Lord thing. It sounds a bit…cosmic in scale. I'm not saying I know anything at all about them, so lemme know if I'm off track. What if it's not this Doctor doing it?"

Somehow Jack lost track of what his team's medic was saying. "There are no other Time Lords. How could it be anything other than the Doctor interfering?"

Punching the air with the pen, Owen tried to make his point. "And how much interfering can the bloke do from a sealed off universe? What if it isn't him at all? What if there's some…cosmic balance that needs to be maintained? What if there has to be Time Lords in this universe, no matter what."

"Then what's she saying about going back and 'fixing' everything by trading places with him?"

Owen pushed some papers together; it was the short form of the report on their findings of the examination. "Look, I'm not saying I know what's going on. I could be completely wrong here. But it seems like there's something bigger at work that's trying to 'fix' something. The spirit of the Time Lords, or whatever they worshiped, or whatever. Or time, or the universe. I don't know. What has that kind of power?" He put everything in a folder and handed it to Jack.

Ignoring that he was even being given something, Jack yanked open the door behind him. "Or Bad Wolf." Without making a proper goodbye, or even a thank you, he took off quickly towards Rose's room.

He still wasn't letting this happen.

XYZ

Rose was rather surprised when she woke, that she wasn't groggy in the least. She wasn't much of a morning person, so the typical period of drifting between asleep and awake was to be expected, but it wasn't present in the least, nor what should have a stupor from having been drugged into oblivion.

In fact, she seemed to be more clear-headed than she'd been in weeks. She'd blamed it on sleep deprivation, improper nutrition and worry. The last week or so had been particularly bad—a blur even.

She couldn't even remember half of what she'd told that too-nice-for-

her-own-good Gwen Cooper in the lunch room.

Now everything was just so clear. Muddled, because of all the things she now saw. But there was a clarity in the chaos. Gwen Cooper was an old soul. She was tied in some as of yet unknown way to the rift in Cardiff and to a certain nineteenth-century maid Rose had once known. It wasn't entirely written yet what her place in this universe was, but Rose saw that it was an important role. Jack wasalso somehow part of that, and it all twisted together in the big, messy Gordian knot that was Time and Space.

She suddenly wanted to get out and see it all. Every little thing she could possibly fit into her day, she wanted to do. Sixteenth century Italian opera, dinosaurs. No…alien dinosaurs. She'd go to some other planet…there were so many to choose from. And there would be dinosaurs, and she'd put out a blanket and have her lunch. It would be fantastic.

First she just had to get out of these restraints.

Which wasn't the easiest thing to do with Ianto in the room and her pretending to be asleep still. She'd managed to slid her thumb beneath one of the leather wrist restraint.

About twenty minutes into her unnoticeable struggle there was a knock on the door, and Ianto sighed, dimming the light and leaving. Patience was sometimes rewarded. Not often. Other times it was initiative that saved the day. She was a go-get-em kinda girl, so she was largely OK with that.

And right now…

It was time to go get 'em.

XYZ

"She hasn't woken up yet," Ianto reported to the acting head of Torchwood One. "She hasn't shown any signs of waking, her vitals have been steady if a little odd… the doctors have been in and out a dozen times in the last two hours."

Nodding, Jack stared at the closed door for a moment. He'd done what he needed to do, even if he knew Rose would be furious with him when all was said and done. But he was OK with it. This was for her… whether she'd ever come to realize this or not.

"What about that other…stuff?" Ianto would know what he was talking about. Ianto was just good like that.

The younger man nodded. "Martha Jones, if we have the right one, is a medical student, and will be sitting exams sortly. No known connection to the Doctor, Rose Tyler or Torchwood. We're still waiting for more information on some of the things she was referencing. In the interim, we can pull in Miss Jones for questioning."

Rubbing his chin with his thumb, jack frowned, trying to figure out the best course of action. "But Rose was talking like that stuff hadn't happened yet, but would happen, after she set everything right. So I'm not sure that this girl would know anything…no. Pull her in." It sounded rash, but he needed all the information he could get. Maybe if he found some connection between this girl and the Doctor, or this girl and Rose, he'd find some way to break the chain of events they seemed to have set themselves upon. Because he'd be damned if he'd trade Rose Tyler for anyone or anything. And somehow, the universe and the Doctor would just have to learn how to live with that.

Ianto nodded. "Very good. How should I proceed? Informal interrogation? I can present it as a potential government job opportunity."

"Yeah. No need to frighten her if we don't need to. Or alert her in any sort of way, incase something is going to happen that she's going to be involved with… that'd potentially mess up time lines in ways we can't imagine." Jack wasn't sure having a Time Lord around would sort the mess either if the Time Lord was part of the problem. And he wasn't sure that Rose knew enough about her…new situation to help.

Ianto whipped out his phone and began dialing a number he'd no doubt already memorized. Ianto Jones was such a curious man, Jack decided.

Of course…Rose just might know. Something had put the language of the Doctor's people in Rose's head.

That lead to a question he didn't think anyone had an answer for: how to question a TARDIS.

"I see," Ianto said tersely, drawing Jack's attention back to the moment. The other man switched off his phone and slid it into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. "I don't believe we'll be questioning Ms. Jones."

"Oh?" Somehow Jack doubted he'd like the answer to this.

Rose's personal assistant remained expressionless. "The hospital in which she was studying has vanished."

Sighing, Jack ran a hand through his hair. Torchwood had been putting out spectacular forest fires the last half year, both here and in Cardiff, but this was some new level of weird. Doctor-type business.

Which meant they were probably screwed.

Putting his hands on his hips, he tried to formulate something resembling a plan. "OK. I want everyone here that's working on the Rose situation to drop it and turn their attention to this. Was anybody going to call us? Geeze. Anyway. Get someone on energy readings—hospitals don't just vanish. If it was vaporised there'll be some indication of that. If it was transported, we'll see that. Gwen's still hanging around, get her on interviews, I want to find out exactly what people saw. Get the police off of this, and the military. This is a Torchwood matter."

Ianto had the phone in hand before Jack had even finished issuing orders. "Yes sir. What about Ms Tyler?"

Grabbing the door handle, Jack shook his head with a resigned sigh. "I'll check on her, then make a decision. We're probably going to need someone to stay with her. Someone with a low rating on fieldwork—we need everyone out there. But someone who can handle her."

"I'll handle it," the assistant assured him with the efficient detachment that Jack had come to trust and respect. Ianto Jones wasn't just a hot piece of ass that Yvonne Hartman had kept around to make coffee.

Yanking the door opened, Jack sighed. "Never mind. We don't need anyone to sit with her." Ianto looked over his shoulder at the scene. The room was empty, the bed a shambles and the restraints undone. Even in the dim light, he could see no sign of how Rose had gotten out. "However, I have a feeling wherever this investigation takes us, we're going to run into Rose again. Call me crazy."

TBC…


	16. Chapter 16

Oh how the mighty had fallen. "I was just wondering if you could, y'know…talk to him…" Fallen so very, very low. The lowest place a Time Lord could go.

"I'll knock him upside the head, that's what I'll do," Jackie promised in a huff. With a frying pan, no doubt. The Doctor always got the wooden spoon, but he had a feeling from her frustration level that Jackie'd be upgrading to heavier kitchen devices shortly.

Pinching his eyes shut, the Doctor covered them over with one hand. Why did this feel like the beginning of the end? Well he had just looked up the number for the spa Jackie was staying at, and had had his arch nemesis paged to handle some unpleasant domestics on his behalf. "But… don't say I said anything? Just, call home all casual-like, and maybe… wait. Never mind. You're Jackie. Subtle doesn't come into it." He let out a deep breath filled with pent-up frustration. Pete had demanded he complete the psychological profile and explain all of his notes, as a condition of remaining in the house. "So… how's your weekend?"

Jackie sighed, or maybe it was a growl. He couldn't tell. If he lived to be a milliondy-billiondy, he'd never understand Jackie Tyler. Who the hell was he kidding? Women in general were just too difficult to understand. But he (gulp) needed Jackie's help. It had gotten more crowded in his head, and the universes were… smaller somehow and he needed to find out why. He didn't have time for Pete trying be like… in charge and stuff.

Because if he was right… it meant that he was going home!

Home! He hadn't thought he'd had one, till he'd had to spent an extended period time away from his universe and his ship. But this place was… weird and he didn't like it.

"You're interrupting a very important mud bath," Jackie announced finally. "Look. I'll be home in a few hours."

Oh that'd be just… forever. He'd die before then—death by Pete. "Thanks Jackie, you're the best."

XYZ

"Because trying to explain ourselves went so well!" Martha Jones shouted as they ran through the hospital again.

Rose looked behind her, making sure the new girl was keeping up. "I didn't say it was THE plan! I just said it was A plan! I'll think of something!" Right now was one of those times when things looked pretty darn doomed. Oh yeah, and it turned out she was an alien.

Skidding as she turned a corner, she grabbed Martha and dragged her along. They nearly knocked over a food service trolley and ended up tripping over a plant in their effort to avoid a patient in the hall.

It was almost like she shouldn't be surprised that it was true, but she'd still been a bit on the shocked side when they'd scanned her, and she'd come up alien. Well, that really wasn't good. These rhino people were looking for an alien, and she'd just popped up on their radar.

Yanking on the door handle of a supply cupboard, she pulled them both inside, slamming the door behind them and dragging a heavy box in front of it. "We haveta find the real alien!" Rose announced, digging for her TARDIS key.

Martha Jones had dark skin, a good complexion, hair that cooperated, and was unfairly tall—all things that made Rose insanely jealous of her, instantly. They also made Rose terribly put out when the other woman blustered with unimpressedness at the sight of her ship. "That's your plan? Hide in a big wooden box! I like your first plan better!"

Something twisted the handle of the cupboard door and Rose jammed the key into the TARDIS lock and opened it, pushing Martha inside and locking the door behind her. A second after that, the ship's door jostled as something slammed into it. Martha jumped and Rose just calmly walked to the console. "Don't worry. I have it on good authority even the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get in here. I have a real plan this time. I just need to…figure out how to work the external scanners."

"Uh… you know your box is bigger on the inside?"

She turned back to Martha, who was standing slack-jawed on the ramp. "She's also alive and talks to me. But that's not the point." When the woman in the lab coat made no signs of moving, Rose and went back to what she was doing. She'd calculated the volume of air in the building and surrounding force field, the people in the hospital didn't have much time yet.

Reaching under the console for something large like a phone book and possessing a metal cover, she began looking through the index at book one of the TARDIS manual. It also looked like maths were her new thing. Huh.

So much could change so quickly. Scanners… scanners… hibernation mode, triangulation sequence, defensive measures… external scanners. There.

Dragging the book with her, Rose dashed around the console. "I'm still a little new to this whole… piloting thingy. The ship's former owner made this look so…" she couldn't say easy. It had never looked easy for the Doctor. But he'd always been so sure of himself with every button he pushed and lever he pulled. "Give me a second to figure it out."

Martha jumped and squeaked as something crashed into the door. "Are you sure we have that long?"

Flipping switches according to the manual instructions, Rose tried to figure out the controls that no longer looked like the schematics. There was no room for comforting the medical student, she needed all of her attention on figuring out the TARDIS. Why had she never gotten the Doctor to teach her how to pilot this thing?

Slapping a big round thing that looked a bit like a pie plate, she grinned. "Ha HAH! There we go. Now it just needs to sort through all the aliens that're alike for the alien that's different!" She folded her arms over her chest, quite proud of herself.

The other woman wasn't impressed. She was pretty, tall and not impressed. Life was not fair on so many levels that Rose couldn't even count them right now. Martha was still looking around from the coral buttresses to the ceilings. "I'm on the moon, in a space ship that's bigger on the inside, being hunted by aliens."

Ok, so the seriousness of the way the other woman said it was strangely endearing to Rose. "Lots more where that came from. It also travels in time. Wanna come with? Not now I mean. When this is over. And I think we're really close. Look at that. It's the crazy old bat with the straw. I should have figured she'd be the alien. Now we just need to convince the rhino things of that."

XYZ

"I love you."

"Right."

"No, really."

Not bothering to reply to that, Mickey turned his attention back to the road. The yellowish-green leaves of spring overhung the back road, and the further they got from civilization, the more the trees blocked out the sunlight. Half a mile later, Mickey had needed to flip on the lights. His afternoon in the warm sun had just been usurped by a Time Lord running away from the prospect of having to explain himself.

Well, Pete's little weekend plans had gone straight to hell. He could have told Pete that the Doctor wasn't a threat—not in the way that Pete was thinking. Of course, Mickey wasn't sure that the Doctor wasn't crazy, so he understood Pete's mania with getting to the bottom of the tenuous relationship the Doctor had with Jackie, and making sure that it was ok for him to be around the head of Torchwood's pregnant wife.

The Doctor may have very well gone mad and Mickey hadn't noticed. He talked to himself incessantly, threw himself out of windows, covered every spare surface in the attic with symbols he was certain Rose could read…and he thought he was communicating with Rose.

He knew the Doctor was capable of the impossible, but this was just…

The Doctor stared out the window, thumb tapping against his teeth as he no doubt planned his next move. His eyes were kind of glazed over and his face had a certain vulnerability that probably contradicted whatever was going on inside of his enormous brain. He was probably working on the duel problems of getting back to Rose and dealing with the loss of his home-base. He could also be contemplating what to have for lunch.

Maybe it was true. Maybe he really did have some strange link with some box made in an alien woodshop class back when the Doctor was a whippersnapper of about a hundred. Or whatever. At this point… Mickey WANTED to believe.

"You know what I don't get?" The Doctor piped up finally, never taking his eyes off of his own reflection in the glass beside him. "Why they took all my stuff to Torchwood. They won't understand it. What sort of determination of my sanity are they going to make from that stuff? None. That's what."

Mickey shrugged. "I dunno. You think Pete's up to something?" Of course, that'd make Mickey in on it, wouldn't it? Cos Mickey… WAS in on it. He'd been the one to trickle down the orders about Pete's impromptu investigation. But he'd been the first person the Doctor had called, after the Jackie plan had fallen apart.

The Doctor was very quiet for a moment as he pondered it. "I would… if he weren't so… Pete."

OH that was arrogance. Mickey was a little insulted for his boss. "You know, that man took down all the Cybermen in Paris? By himself? He's got game." The point was… Pete wasn't all just doting after Jackie all the time and stuff—he could be a mean bastard when he needed to be. And right now… he was probably being a mean bastard in his effort to dote on Jackie just a little bit more before the baby came.

"Pete's getting in my way."

Mickey's cheek twitched. "Want me to bump him off for ya?"

The Doctor looked at him like he was crazy. Which was funny coming from a grown man in the process of running away from home. Again. "Why don't you shut up and take me to Torchwood."

Ok, so at this point, Mickey was just taking a perverse sort of pleasure in the Doctor's predicament. "We gunna go collect all your toys and go home? Cos I don't think it works like that."

Pulling his coat tighter around himself, the Doctor looked resolved, as if he'd come to some sort of decision in the matter. "I'm not going back there."

As carefully as he could, Mickey swung the van out and made a three point turn on the single-lane gravel road. "Alright. So. Plan?" it WOULD be nice to know what the hell they were doing, despite how the Doctor made things up on the fly (brilliantly, by the Doctor's own estimation, he might add).

Nothing like a bit of backtracking to really put the afternoon in perspective. Or to make him want to kill the Doctor properly. If this wasn't for Rose, he'd have let the aliens kill the Doctor weeks ago, because it wasn't as if his efforts were appreciated in any sort of way.

It was to be expected though, Mickey thought as he passed through the same overgrowth he'd just seen. Times changed, universes changed, and he'd still always be the Tin Dog. Now days he wasn't even coming in second to Rose (which was perfectly understandable—those two idiots were crazy for each other, even if neither of them would admit it), but he was coming in second to possibility (not even the memory) of Rose, which was just… damned annoying.

The Doctor sat up straight, a determined look fixing itself upon his face and hardening his features. "I'm getting my stuff back, starting with the box. I'm going to figure out what this all means. I'm going to figure out how to get back to my universe, and I'm going to figure out why it's so…NOISY in my head all of a sudden."

XYZ

It was all happening so fast. The hospital had reappeared and Jack had stormed right through the front door before anyone else could, and he'd found Rose standing in the open doorway of a cupboard, excitedly sticking her tongue down some poor girl's throat.

He just kind of stopped there in the middle of the narrow hall, staff filing past to check on patients and UNIT soldiers rushing in the other direction. Rose was totally stealing his gig.

After a few moments, she pulled her face away from the surprised young woman, grinning like a maniac. "That was brilliant! You were brilliant, Martha Jones! It was all so… BRILLIANT."

The dark-skinned woman with the glazed look in her eyes pressed her fingers to her lower lip like she wasn't sure whether she'd liked it or not. Or like Rose had just sprouted antennae and bulging green eyes.

Finally Jack just had to step in, if only to save the poor woman from Rose. "Well, looks like you handled things here."

For a moment, Rose looked past him, or maybe through him. "He would have done it better. He did do it better. That one time. Or he will." She really enjoyed making sense, didn't she? But her eyes came back into focus. "I was just telling Martha that it travels in time. We can have her back before her brother's party tonight, what do you say?"

Coughing, Jack looked apologetically to the woman, who was still a little stunned. "Didn't LOOK like you were talking."

Without warning, Rose slapped one on him as well. Not that he didn't appreciate the… wow, and with her hands on his neck, and the…

Finally he pulled his head away to breathe. "Wohhh. Hold on, Tiger. What's with the…" completely non-contemporary self-expression?"

Sliding her palms to his cheeks, she held his face in her hands. "Can't I just kiss you cos I'm happy to be alive? Look at it! It's a perfect day! And the hospital's back on Earth, where it should be, and Martha Jones is completely brilliant, and you're completely brilliant, and everything's…"

Something suddenly came to her and she paused for a moment, contemplating it. Then, without visible warning, she pulled back and slapped him across the face. "THAT is for drugging me, Jack Harkness," she grumbled harshly, but softened. "Ok, I forgive you. I needed the nap. My brain wasn't quite right yet."

Martha Jones slowly started backing away from Rose and Jack. "Oh yeah, cos you're so right in the head NOW."

Throwing her hands up in the air, Rose rolled her eyes and began walking toward the police box sitting innocuously in the back of the supply cupboard. "Fine, both of you! But I'm going this way, and if anybody wants to meet William Shakespeare, then you'd better get inside, cos the train is leaving!"

And being the sheep that they were, Jack and Martha looked at each other, then followed her into the TARDIS. "Is she always this nuts?" Martha asked as the door clicked closed behind them.

Jack just watched Rose run around the console with a frenetic energy he'd only seen in one other person. "Only since she became an alien."

The wrist of Martha's lab coat brushed against her lips, like she could somehow wipe the germs away. "That sort of thing contagious?"

Walking down the ramp, Jack wasn't sure what to say. "Probably not." That was probably the most diplomatic answer. And most likely the truth—as long as Martha didn't come across any crazy boxes or other artifacts from the Doctor's people, she was most likely safe. "Rose…WHY are we going to see William Shakespeare?"

She looked up from the controls, something crazy overtaking the manic look that seemed to always be there now. "Why not see William Shakespeare? Live a little, Jack! We're going to meet William Shakespeare and go to the end of the universe, and…" She looked down at the controls and frowned. "Oh Shoot. THAT isn't supposed to happen."

"What isn't?" he and the other passenger, Martha Jones, asked at the same time, a bit frightened of their novice driver."

Looking up innocently, Rose smiled. "We're, uh… going to the end of the universe. I don't think we're supposed to be able to do that." She looked up at the top of the console as the central column slid up and down furiously. "Are we supposed to be able to do that?"

When Rose paused, Jack instinctively grabbed Martha's arm and pulled her closer to him. This couldn't be good. His other hand grabbed hold of the nearest railing, fully expecting them to crash-land.

Rose looked at Jack, eyes wide, but full of some new and sudden understanding. "We're not supposed to be able to do this. She's not happy that you're here, Jack."

"Well, she's had MONTHS to lodge her protest!"

Martha turned toward Rose. "Wait, we're going to the end of the universe?"

Beginning a frantic attempt to counteract the ship, Rose began yanking levers and turning knobs. "She doesn't want you here while she's flying! I don't know… but you do feel WRONG, if that counts for anything!" Something began beeping angrily. "OH CRAP. I was never trained on this device…"

She hit a final button, one that Jack had never seen the Doctor have cause to use. The ship began trembling and Martha drew herself closer to Jack. He could feel the ship vibrating all the way through his bones, making his inner ear buzz it was going so fast.

He had no idea how Rose was keeping her footing. She simply dashed around, still trying to control the ship, as if this was an unexpected but not unfortunate occurrence. "Ok, I have one more thing I can try…"

Before she could do anything, however, the ship lurched hard. Jack and Martha were thrown into the railing, it clipping them both in the stomach. Rose hit the grate floor with an astounding, ship-rattling thud.

Then everything was silent.

TBC…


	17. Chapter 17

In the small enclave serving as a lounge in the corner of the lab, Martha Jones started awake. It had been a full day since she'd last slept, and she hadn't meant to doze off…but she had no idea what Yana and Rose were going on about. And while Jack Harkness was a nice man, at least concerned for her well being while trapped at the end of the universe without the magic phone box that had brought them there, he was certainly keeping close to Rose Tyler. It was obvious the two had a history.

And so after a long conversation about what the end of the universe was like with Chantho, the perfectly lovely (if entirely alien) lab assistant, she'd drifted off. Well, truthfully, she'd started to fall asleep during their conversation, at which point Chantho had excused herself and left Martha to her nap.

Sitting forward on the sofa-like-thing, Martha leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, staring at her hands. Of all the things to dream about…what did it mean? Could it be something more than her subconscious playing up? She had been to the moon and the very end of the universe, all within the same twenty-four hours period. Certainly that was to account for some of the weirdness running around in her dreams…

"Had enough of the end of the universe already?"

Martha's eyes snapped away from her palms and she tried to look at Captain Jack, but it took her eyes a moment to focus. "Sorry. Just thinking."

Jack grinned, giving her a flirtatious smile that was completely contradictory to just how protective he was being of Rose Tyler, alien genius and instigator of this whole bloody affair. "About what?"

She rubbed her temples, then sat back on the sofa, crossing her arms over her lab coat. "A dream I just had. It was weird. But specific. Not to mention a lot more vivid than anything I've ever had—or at least anything I remembered after I woke up."

Shrugging, Jack seemed unconcerned. "Been a busy day."

"That's what I said to myself. Aliens on the moon, time and space machines that're bigger on the inside, the end of the universe and being chased by Mad Max castoffs…But it was just like this…only different. You were dead, and you came back to life."

When Jack's grin fell and his eyes grew dark and serious, she knew it was more than just a dream. "We were here, in this same place. Rose wasn't here. It was some man called the Doctor." Jack's jaw locked, and she knew she had to confirm it. "Handsome bloke, if a bit nerdy?" But he didn't respond. He didn't even move. Which was about all the confirmation she needed. "Jack…what's going on?"

He folded his arms over his chest and looked at her as if she had somehow done something wrong. "What happened in the dream?"

"This Doctor bloke got the ship running for Yana. You and he were talking about Rose. About her being in another dimension, and he couldn't get to her. He sounded so…cold. Like his heart was wounded and he was trying to swallow it down whole. Then he asked you if you wanted to die for real."

Jack licked his lips. "Okay."

Martha watched him for a moment. He was so…unsurprised. "This doesn't sound like it's new to you."

"It might not be," whatever that meant.

Somewhere in the distance Rose squealed with delight at having understood something that Yana was showing her. The learning curve was steep, but she was picking things up much quicker than anyone thought possible.

For some reason that made Martha wince. "Anyway, horrible things happen. Yana wasn't Yana." She lowered her voice, not seeing the Professor's assistant anywhere in sight, but not wanting to be overheard. "Chantho was dead." She looked away, unsure of what she was about to tell him. "And then Rose was there. Only she told me, me specifically, that she wasn't Rose. She was…all yellow and on fire. And she said the human race had to die here."

Jack put his hands on his hips checking to see if anyone else was listening. "A dream is just a dream…" He shook his head. "Except…there've been a lot of those going around lately. What else happen?"

Martha sat forward again. "Then she said… and I remember this part clearest… 'I am the Bad Wolf. I bring life…but the human race has to die here, in the dark and in the cold."

Rather suddenly, Jack stepped backward, practically jumping when he hit the wall. "Lets get the hell out of here."

XYZ

The Doctor wasn't concentrating on the box anymore. He was rubbing his temples and staring at the wall again. He'd been doing it off and on for the last half-hour, since they'd retrieved some of his things from Torchwood, and he'd holed up in 'his' tiny examination room.

Mostly, Mickey was getting bored with it. Sure, he'd gone against his boss's wishes in helping the Doctor escape interrogation and getting the alien his little toys back. But this was more movement on this project than they'd had in MONTHS. "What is it?"

The man sitting at the drafting table, ignoring the box that he was convinced he'd made in alien woodshop ages and ages ago continued massaging his head with long, thin fingers. "It's so… busy in here. Martha Jones… Martha Jones. Do we know a Martha Jones? Is there one at Torchwood?"

"Martha Jones?" Well, that was a perfectly common name, Mickey thought. There'd haveta be loads of Martha Jones' running around Torchwood. One on every floor, even. He sighed. "I'll look."

He left the Doctor to his stupid box. Leaving the airless cupboard of an examination room, and found the nearest computer terminal. Sliding into someone's chair in a too-neat-to-be-for-real cubicle and logged on with his just-shy-of-god privileges to the network and pulled out his mobile, dialing Pete's number. It was a tad on the annoying side, having to play both sides of this, both with his boss and the Doctor. Especially since his boss was already playing both sides of it with the alien.

At the end of the day, what it came down to was one thing: Mickey Smith couldn't win. He'd have totally abandoned the Doctor to his own craziness, but it really was the most life he'd seen in the alien since he and Jackie had turned up on this world. The Doctor had been a man devoid of an identity—not just a name—until this all had started, and there had been a problem to work on.

And, deep down, Mickey secretly hoped that somehow, through this entire sea of unlikely and unpredictable events… maybe, just maybe, he'd get to see Rose again.

His boss picked up on the other end after one ring. Suddenly Mickey felt as if he had very little to actually report, given just how anxiously Pete had said hello. "Well, we're back at Torchwood, finally. I wish I had good news. He's either completely cracked, or he's seriously onto something."

"So basically, we know nothing more than we did before Jackie left this weekend."

Typing 'Martha Jones' into the personnel database, Mickey winced. "He IS sorry about dragging her into this, and dragging her home from her weekend away, if that counts for anything."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't. I sent her back to the spa, but she somehow managed to lose her driver by feigning a pregnant woman loo break, and now she's gone missing. Oh yeah, and she's sworn never to talk to me ever again."

This must have been terribly hard for Pete. He'd confessed a long time ago, after a few drinks that the Doctor was the only thing standing between him and Jackie. "She's all bulge and hormones, she'll come back around."

Pete sniffed, as if he wasn't so sure. "I want results today. I need an answer one way or another—is he insane, or can he break down the wall between the worlds? Because if I don't have answers—or they're not the answers I want—he's gone. He can be some other government agency's problem. I'm sure someone at UNIT would love to pick his brain or the rest of him. I really don't care at this point."

Of course Pete cared, Mickey thought. Otherwise the older man wouldn't have let this go on as long as it had. Seven months was quite enough time to get rid of one pesky Time Lord. Of course, constantly attempting to smooth things over between the Doctor and Jackie wasn't really helping if getting rid of the Doctor was really part of some grand plan.

"Martha Jones," Mickey rejoined, in the most impromptu manner. "Name mean anything to you? The Doctor's been rabbiting on about her."

"Must be a thousand working for Torchwood, mustn't there? I mean, not exactly an uncommon name, is it?"

"Believe it or not, boss…not a single one working for Torchwood." Clicking through a few more internal records, Mickey switched to public. "And only one in the area."

Something heavy and metal slapped against the institutional grey linoleum floor behind Mickey. "Martha Jones!" the Doctor called out from his cupboard. Something else shifted and crashed and the Doctor let out a yelp that was both startled and triumphant. "I know Martha Jones!"

Logging out of the computer as quickly as possible, Mickey made his way back to the work room. "I guess we're about to find out," he muttered into the phone.

The stool the Doctor had been using was laying on the floor behind him. A stack of papers containing various readouts were now spread across the workbench. Bits of the box were in pieces on the desk, the lid separated from the hinges and the locking mechanism and stacked neatly in a little pile while the Doctor swung the box itself around menacingly. "Martha Jones! I met her! In another timeline! Do you know what that means? If there're other timelines that I haven't seen that I can see now, and see them like they're the real thing, and see people like Martha Jones and other possibilities an all that good time-lordy stuff and… and…STUFF?" The Doctor grinned like he'd figured out how to turn lead into gold.

Mickey held out a hand, waiting for an answer. "What?"

The Doctor's face fell. "That the world's about to end." He thrust the box at his former rival. "But there's another Time Lord!"

"We'll alert the media," Pete said in Mickey's ear dryly.

XYZ

Jack held up a hand and gestured to the woman excitedly taking in everything Yana was telling her about turning gluten and other food substances into circuitry. "Rose. Can I have a minute?"

He looked back toward the little lounge area, at Martha, leaning against a metal beam with her arms crossed over her chest. Neither of them had any idea how this was going to go. So Jack grinned.

Rose's head popped up from what she was looking at, her eyes a tad unfocused. "Can't it wait, Jack? The Professor's telling me about the footprint engine…"

Looking back at Martha, he pressed his lips together and shook his head. Drastic measures. Right.

He crossed the lab, winking at the blue alien with the gorgeous chocolate eyes and slid past her and grabbed Rose's shoulders. She still wasn't even seeing him, but somehow seemed to be looking beyond, to maybe the past or the future, or something that'd never happen, but somehow had, according to Rose.

Trying to find the girl he'd danced on an invisible ship in front of Big Ben with in her now-foreign eyes, he finally gave up and slammed his lips against hers, tongue probing the inside of her upper lip before sliding further in. Every last bit of concern and worry, coupled with his vow to not let her go without a fight was in that kiss, trying to get her attention just long enough to drag her back to the ship. The one that was still out there, with the Future Kind.

He slid his fingers up her shoulders, once he was certain she wouldn't move away, then cupped her cheeks. The moment he felt her kiss back, he pulled back just a few inches to stare very intimately in those gold-flecked eyes. "Rose…the Bad Wolf says that we have to leave. Now." He spoke quietly, hoping that Yana wouldn't hear.

Her flushed lower lip quivered as she took a step back from him. "We can help the Professor before we leave. I'm hardly going to leave humanity to the cold and the darkness, am I?"

Jack gritted his teeth and leaned in to her again, but she pulled away, laughing. "Jack, unless you know how to fly the TARDIS, we're staying. We'll go see Shakespeare later."

Shaking his head, he pulled away from her…briefly wondering where his Rose had gone. When she was yapping again with the professor, he grabbed Martha Jones' arm and dragged her away from the lab. "Plan B involves drastic-er measures."

"Involving?"

Jack stalked away from her, toward one of the access tunnels. "A sledgehammer, the back of her head, and forced regeneration."

XYZ

Running down the ill-lit corridor, through Torchwood's development department, Mickey thought back to that month or so, where he traveled with Rose and the Doctor. There was nothing quite like that to see just how irrelevant he was in the world. Being the Tin Dog was one thing, following after Rose and the Doctor like one was quite another.

He told the men guarding the door to where the good stuff was kept to stand down, which he was certain the Doctor didn't appreciate. So what if they'd have shot him up with semi-automatic fire? He'd just regenerate and go right along being infuriating and confounding.

It had been a long few years, first with the Cybermen, then after they all disappeared. Things had really sort of snowballed from there. Trans-dimensional travel, Daleks, void ships… trying to keep the Doctor from alternately falling stagnate due to ennui or doing something that annoyed Jackie due to despair.

Skidding into the two-storey room containing all of the stuff Torchwood couldn't get working, he saw the Doctor climbing up something that looked like a tree, if trees were made out of twisted metal cords. "How do you people find anything in here?" the alien asked, hanging off a branch-like thing to look around.

Mickey Smith: perpetual tag-along. It was JUST like old times. "Well, tell me what we're looking for, and we'll see what we can do." They did actually catalog stuff and things like that. Them being a real organization with a payroll and taxes and such. Unlike the Doctor, who had used his sonic screwdriver on a cash point because he wanted chips, flooding the street with bills and somehow creating a situation in which Torchwood had to pull a cover up on a Treasury investigation.

"I'm looking for something that can detect various types of energy…Arton, Huon.. the works." The Doctor grabbed onto another branch thingy and climbed up a little further, squinting at the contents of the warehouse. "That box wasn't empty. There was some small tiny smidge of Vortex energy inside. It's probably what jumpstarted the connection between me and Rose. I want to find out why and what it means and why the world is ending because of it."

"Ok. Lemme check the computers…" Searching in the catalog of recovered items seemed so much saner than climbing a tree.

Especially when the Doctor lost his footing on a piece that was apparently much smoother than it appeared and came crashing to the ground. It was only about twelve feet total, but of course the Doctor had to hit his head on a branchy thingy on the way down, knocking him out cold.

"Well, how the hell can I beat him within an inch of his life," Jackie announced loudly behind Mickey. "If he's already unconscious?"

XYZ 

Ok. That was… so completely unintentional. Even more unintentional like that time he went through that window in the attic and ended up in a sea of broken glass along the path that lead to the garden.

But the unintentionality of slipping on a piece of smooth metal kind of made him believe that whatever was going on, he was meant to be here, seeing this.

And what was this? Some laboratory in some far-flung time, Rose talking to some grandfatherly old man, and Jack…coming up behind her with a crowbar? "Uh, Rose…behind you…"

She turned around slowly, her arms folding over her chest as she quizzically looked Jack over. "Jack. Can we help you?"

Jack lowered the crowbar innocuously, trying to laugh it off. He was trying to kill her. That was just… madness. "Oh, nothing. They found the TARDIS. And I think I know how to solve your power flow problems."

Rose put her hands on her hips. "You're really not thinking…"

The captain shrugged. "Hey, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right?"

When Rose threw her arms around Jack, thanking him for being so brilliant, he noticed her. Martha Jones. He'd seen her in the threads of time, in this place. Saving the world from some shadowy figure he couldn't quite see. How had she ended up here with Rose, and where was here? How had they gotten the TARDIS to fly?

At some point, Rose started thanking Jack in a way he found wholly unnecessary. He was certain tongue was involved, and the part where her hand slid beneath the collar of his shirt they all could have probably done without. And did Jack really need to wrap his arms around her like that? Like he'd take all her clothes off, if he didn't have a crowbar still clutched in one hand? Didn't she know she was in public? Looking away, he sighed dramatically.

Rose's lips disengaged from Jack's, and she looked over her shoulder. "And just what's your problem? And what the hell're you doing here?"

"You can see me?"

Turning in Jack's arms, she stared right at him. Her eyes were suddenly…piercing. More depthful than any meaningful glance Rose Tyler had ever given him before. She was someone else now. "And hear you too, pouting. It's unbecoming."

She'd sounded like Romana just then. Oh how he missed the Time Lady—she'd always been telling him how this that and the other thing was unbecoming of a Time Lord. Anything fun, basically.

"Is he here?" Jack asked suddenly. "I got a question for that son of a bitch. Ask him what he's done to you."

The old man was glancing back and forth, from Jack (who still had his arms around Rose) and the empty space that Rose was talking into. "Is who here?"

Behind them, Martha Jones was creeping toward them, one hand reaching out, possibly to grab the crowbar from Jack. "Is there a reason they're all trying to kill you?" the Doctor asked her suddenly.

"Are we sure we have time for all this?" the man in the well-cut vest asked, fumbling with something in his pocket. "Those power couplings are on a rather tight power schedule…" Without looking at it, the man wagged a fob watch at them in a semi-scolding manner.

The Doctor squinted, trying to get a good look at the markings. "Rose… Rose! Ask him what that is! Ask him if he knows what that watch is!"

This could be the other Time Lord he'd felt. The presence of another Time Lord could bridge the gap between the universes. He could be on his way home.

OH yeah, and there was that pesky thing about the universe exploding that he'd have to address at some point.

TBC…


	18. Chapter 18

Jack had no idea what Rose was doing

Jack had no idea what Rose was doing. Of course, he'd lost his ability to even relate to her on an intellectual level back when she started writing the language of the Doctor's people and solving complex mathematical equations. All without knowing it.

Still… Jack had his burning imagination, tempered (or fueled, as the case may be) by over a hundred years of getting into tight situations. Asking Yana about the watch seemed like a magnificently bad idea. Especially because when the old guy looked at it, it seemed like this was the first time he'd ever seen it.

"Well, what would happen if you opened it?" Rose asked, and something knotted in Jack's stomach. Why wouldn't she listen to him? It was like he was less than completely there, lately. He'd talk, and she'd just…make assumptions about what she thought he was saying instead of actually paying attention to him. Or Martha Jones for that matter. He could tell she liked Martha, but she never really looked at their slightly-abducted medical student.

The old man blustered, his cheeks growing flushed. "I don't know." His brow turned downward and he rubbed his head, a sweat breaking out on his brow.

Martha, bless her 'fix everything' doctor tendencies, stepped in and tried to diffuse the situation before it erupted into God knew what. "Rose, I'm not so sure…"

But Yana's thumb was over the clasp and he was about to open it. Jack actually closed his eyes, fully expecting the entire world to end. He wasn't expecting there to be a crash of metal on cement and Rose gasping.

Wincing, he opened one eye, not at all expecting Martha Jones to save the day. She'd slapped the fob watch into the floor and was scrambling for it. Snatching it up off the floor in the midst of Yana's astonishment and Rose's protests, she let out a heavy breath and held it to her chest. "Yana wasn't Yana. The professor—he wasn't himself. You weren't yourself. Rose, I don't know what this means, but it seems serious. The Bad Wolf said humanity had to die in the dark and in the cold! Rose, are you listening to me?"

"Well, I never!" Yana exclaimed, keeping a careful eye on the watch cradled against Martha Jones. It was like he'd seen it for the first time, and was now obsessed. The angry glint in his eye was enough to confirm that for Jack. The man had a hunger for the thing—which was so far removed from the reserved, jovial fellow they'd come upon.

Not knowing how to react to his friend's irrational behavior, Jack glared at Rose. "We're going home."

And because this is how his whole day had been, Rose wasn't even paying attention to him. She was looking past Yana. "Maybe she has a point," Rose was telling the dead space in the centre of the room. "YOU ask her what Bad Wolf meant! Alright, fine! I'll do it." She turned to Martha. "Bad Wolf?"

Clenching her eyes shut, Martha took a deep breath and steadied herself. "I had a dream. A dream that wasn't a dream." She looked at Jack, who gestured for her to continue. "You—it—whatever said that the human race had to die here."

The seeming-forgotten bug-alien with the too-luscious lips finally spoke up, her antennae flickering back and forth in an agitated manner. "Chan what is this Bad Wolf Tho?"

Martha shrugged. "I don't know. It just said…"

Jack noted Yana backing away slowly, some mixed look of discovery and betrayal playing on his features.

Jack looked down at the watch that Martha had just given him. The alien metal sung in his hands. Nothing that one could hear, but it seemed to vibrate, or sting him in some penetrating way. With caution, he uncurled his fingers from it, and was startled by the pattern. It was his first up-close look at it, and he recognized the script—it was what Rose had been covering the TARDIS with in her efforts to 'communicate' with the Doctor.

Keeping a tight grip on it, he flashed it in front of Rose's face to get her attention. "Rose, what does this say?"

She only glanced at it briefly. "Don't be daft. It says it contains the genetic memories of a Time Lord called--" abruptly falling silent, Rose stared over Jack's shoulder.

"Give…give it to me," Yana stuttered nervously. He was fighting with something, and Jack really didn't want to stick around to find out what that was. The weirdness levels here, at the end of the universe, were uncomfortably high. "Give it to me now," the professor began again, this time his agitation was making him more forceful, but not necessarily more certain. "It's mine, and it rightfully belongs to me," he started again, this time in a tactics change. "You have no claim to it. Give me the watch."

Martha Jones nudged Jack and he noted Rose nodding to the thin air again. "Uh huh," their acquaintance told the invisible party in the room.

Jack let out a groan of frustration. "What is that idiot telling you to do now?" He'd never have said that before—the Doctor was the smartest man he knew, and one he respected above all others. But lately…he just wanted to kill the alien. He just wanted to wrap his fingers around the Doctor's throat and…

Rose's eyes refocused on them. Jack always hated when the Doctor got that 'oh, what're you all doing here?' sort of look about him, and Rose was going the same way. "He, um… thinks we should go back to the TARDIS."

Not waiting for details, Jack grabbed her hand and yanked her toward him. He felt something separate in her shoulder, and he winced. While he'd been perfectly willing to bludgeon her to death a few minutes ago, he really didn't want to hurt her. "Come on."

"TARDIS…" Yana said uncertainly. "TARDISes and Time Lords. You say these things…Always saying these things…"

Jack really hadn't been paying attention to the professor until he saw Martha frozen there, her big brown eyes round with surprise. Slowly he looked over at Yana. The man was holding some sort of laser pistol to Martha's back. "I…I want the watch back. It's mine."

XYZ

The Doctor sputtered, pushing water out of his lungs. Shivering as he sat up, he glared at his OTHER arch-nemesis. "What did you do THAT for? Now I'll never know how it ends!" He shook the drenching water from his face, glaring at the pregnant woman with the bucket.

"Oh, sorry I interrupted your STUPID DREAM!" she hollered in that special Jackie Tyler voice that made chewing glass sound attractive. "Get up off the floor! Pete's asking for your head and Mickey and me are the only reason you're not sitting in a cell right now!"

Pulling his legs under him, he ground his teeth as he got up. His head… was killing him. There were too many people in it right now, and he'd just thoroughly bashed his head off something, and Jackie was existing near him. All intolerable things.

He touched the soft spot on the back of his skull. "Jackie Tyler, I can get back! And now I have to get back, because Rose and Jack and some girl that I've met and haven't met and would have met in another time li--"

Jackie slapped him. "Start talking sense, Mister!"

One hand on his cheek and the other on his bruised cranium, the Doctor looked at her like she'd sprouted a third eye. Mickey was nowhere in sight to save him. Again. It was getting humiliating. "I AM! Reality's a little wibbly-wobbly right now, and you're drowning me and beating me and are probably going to throw me in the river. Look, There's this Time Lord, and I thought he was dead. I mean, I knew he was dead. He got sucked into the Eye of Harmony, and I--" He winced when Jackie's hand reared back. "Ok, anyway, he's back, but he's kind of not back, and I have to make sure he gets not back-back, because, then, like, the whole universe is going to explode or something without me there to stop him because he's a total megalomaniac and I was the only one that could do anything about him."

Jackie scowled, and the Doctor was wondering if she was going to slap him again. "Are you calling my daughter incompetent?"

He blinked. "What?"

Jackie put her hands on her virtually non-existent hips. They were being lost behind the mound of baby she was carrying very high in front of her. "Are you saying my daughter can't handle one little Time Lord?"

The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose. "Jackie Tyler, you make my head explode," he informed her very calmly. "Other Time Lords can't handle this one little Time Lord. I can barely handle this little Time Lord. And that's only because I play dirty pool."

It was the hormones, the Doctor had to remind himself. The hormones were raging so badly he could actually smell them in the oils left on his face when she slapped him a second time. "Dare I ask what that was for?" he mumbled calmly, his headache intensifying with the additional brain jarring.

Jackie blustered, her entire face turning red. It was entirely possible those throbbing veins in her forehead were going to burst and squirt blood all over the warehouse in just a moment. "For leaving my daughter with some…some…Time Lord maniac!"

Rubbing his eyes, the Doctor shifted around in his uncomfortably wet underpants. First of all, it was heinous that Jackie should make him wear the damned things. Second, now they were wet and clingy. "You're impossible. You're completely…" he yawned. "Imposs…" his eyes started drooping.

"Wait? What are you…" Jackie was saying something, but he really couldn't concentrate on it. He could only thing about one thing. Ok, two things. No. Three things.

One, he couldn't remember being this tired in a non-regeneration situation. Two, Jack had under-arm stains. And three… "Jackie…I like oatmeal."

He slid to the floor, feeling like he was going to fade right out of existence. Yana was right there with the gun, and there wasn't anything he could do about…

Just a nap. A nap, then he'd reach out and…and… slap the Master silly.

Twenty minutes. That was all he needed. Power-napping. Twenty minutes until reality exploded .

XYZ

Jack… Jack hated his life. Well he loved his life. He got to shoot things and blow them up. But, on days like today?

On days like today, when he's at the end of the universe, and has three things happening at once… those were the days when he cursed his existence.

Like right now. Yana was having a total freak out session over this damned watch that belonged to some Time Lord, and he had a gun on Martha. If that wasn't bad enough, Rose was wobbling on her feet, blinking something away, and he was standing here with nothing but a crowbar, which was a real shit shield, when going up against a gun.

"Chan, why are you doing this, tho?" The professor's luscious blue assistant asked. "Chan, it is just a watch, tho?"

Sweat glistened off of Yana's chin. His jaw worked up and down like a silent stutter. He maybe didn't want to be doing it, Jack thought. But something compelled him. "It—it's mine. It's mine and I'll have it back. Just give it here."

Still holding up the crowbar-laden hand defensively, Jack shook his head. "I'm sorry, professor. I can't do that."

Chantho was suddenly in Jack's peripheral vision. The moment he saw her, the laser gun went off. There was a pause as the smell of burnt ozone lingered in the air, and everything seemed to hang upon the smoke—expectation and fear and hope. Before it cleared, Rose's body hit the ground.

Aww shit.

XYZ

"Are we dead?"

"I don't think we're dead. I wasn't dead. Well, ok, I don't completely know that for certain. Your mother has been killing me slowly."

The nothingness was… vast. It was neither light nor dark. There was nothing substantial, no concept of space or place, but the nothingness was thick around them like an existential fog.

"You should be nicer to my mother."

"I think you should be meaner to her."

"So how do we get out of this?"

"I like oatmeal."

"Not helping."

"Sorry. First thing that came to mind. Or second." And since they'd tripped quietly, and without him noticing, right into telepathic speech, it had just sort of tumbled out. Since when was Rose telepathic?

"What was the first?"

"Sex? With Jack? In my bed?"

"You want some?"

He hated when her voice got all flirty like that. Mostly, he hated it because he kind of liked it. But she was confounding, because she was being flirty, but she still… with Jack. In his bed. "That was an accusation. Not a request."

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that." She hesitated. "But I really need to get back. We were in the middle of a hostage situation. Friend of yours?"

"Long story. He and I… go way back."

"I didn't think he was your type."

"Rose, this is very serious. The universe is ending. And you're a Time Lord. Did you know that? Seriously. With Jack. In my bed."

"I don't know why you're upset. You like oatmeal."

The Doctor would have sighed, except for the part where there was no air, no space and not time. "We need to get out of here."

"I'm open to suggestions."

"Yeah. Me too."

TBC…


	19. Chapter 19

"So we're not dead."

"We're not dead."

"But we're not alive."

"I didn't say we weren't alive. Sorta. Mostly."

Rose sighed. She was getting a bit bored with this partial existence in a big bunch of nothingness. "So what are we?"

The Doctor somehow managed to outdo her sigh. It was longer and protracted, and somehow managed to echo in the nothingness. "Well, I've been a bit…lax with some things."

"Like telling me that I was going to turn into an alien?"

He always had to overdo everything, didn't he? Even his indignation was so much more forceful than hers. Which was funny, since she was the one who'd been turned into an alien at some point in the last three to seven months. "Yeah, well, you're mother's been force-feeding me. We're even. No. See, there've been no other Time Lords. So I haven't been shielding my thoughts. And there're no other Time Lords. So you didn't know you had to. Though I kind of suspect you wouldn't be a Time Lord-Lady-Person-Thingy if there were other Time Lords, but that's not the point. The point is… we're kind of stuck."

"Where?"

He hesitated, and she knew that she'd probably not like the answer. "In each other's minds."

"Well…crap."

There was more silence. It droned on and on and on. Maybe purgatory, or hell, was that waiting on the edge of the pause, waiting to fall off the cliff into that news no one really wanted to hear. Or maybe it was salvation, at the bottom of that ravine. Who was to know?

"Exactly."

XYZ

Mickey grabbed Jackie's arm when she reached for the Doctor's wet collar again. The first time she'd grabbed his lapel and yanked him upward to let his head drop painfully on the cement floor Mickey had just been too shocked to help the alien. But this time he'd been fast enough to at least try to prevent (further) brain damage from occurring.

"I'll kill him!" she shouted. "I'll kill him until… until he does something!"

She shrugged Mickey off and was about to kick the Doctor in the side when another, more forceful and more familiar set of hands grabbed hold of her. Gripping her upper arms, Pete tried to restrain her. "Love… love, this isn't…"

But Jackie had that look in her eye. The really mean one she'd bore during that year when she'd tried to get Mickey to confess to chopping Rose up into little pieces and tossing her into the river. "He did it! He managed to muck things up an entire universe away!"

Pete looked to Mickey for an explanation. All Mickey could do was shrug. "Apparently the Doctor left Rose alone in another universe with a Time Lord madman." He left out a whole bunch of details, but the essence was what they needed here.

With that revelation, Pete frowned and Mickey was afraid he'd have to rescue the Doctor yet again. "Well, get him the hell up, then!"

XYZ

"What if we?"

"It'll never work."

"You didn't even listen to my idea."

"I'm in your brain, remember?"

A long pause while she contemplated this. "Well… crap."

"I know."

They'd been going around like this for a near-eternity. Rose couldn't stand it any more. "Shy of reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, I'm fresh out of ideas! So you'd better think of something. I dragged Martha Jones to the end of the universe to show her around a bit. I didn't drag her to the end of the universe to be held hostage and killed by a madman Time Lord. So There." She paused, gathering her thoughts. "You'd better just FIX IT."

"You know–this'd be much easier if you just stopped being a Time Lord."

"I'll get right on it."

XYZ

Jack gently tapped Rose's cheek as he unconsciously rocked her body on the floor. That was about all there was left to do. Martha wasn't entirely sure what the hell she'd just witnessed. But it hadn't been pretty. Two people were dead and they were stuck at the end of the universe.

Oh yeah, and to make matters worse, there were those…Mad Max castoffs beating at the metal door.

The blast she'd heard in that cluster of confusion just before Rose dropped to the ground had been Chantho shooting Yana. You could see the uncertainty and betrayal in the blue alien's eyes as she did it–but she wasn't going to let him finish whatever mad thing he'd begun.

Chantho was dead, Yana had declared something about being "The Master" as he slumped to the ground, still reaching for the watch as he died.

And like that–it was all over. Jack grabbed Rose, Martha had gone to Chantho, who was dead before the medical student could even pull the alien's lab coat away to examine the wound. Now here they sat, Martha keeping watch over the body of Chantho, an eye on the rattling door. Oh yeah, and their designated driver was very, VERY unconscious. It didn't get much better than this.

"Jack…" Martha groaned as the heavy cast metal vibrated with the force of the blows. "We need to do something."

There was an intensity in the man's blue eyes she hadn't seen yet. It wasn't panic. More like… extreme worry. "Do YOU know how to fly that thing?" He flicked Rose's cheeks a lot harder. "ROSE!"

Lowering Chantho's head to the ground, Martha grabbed the woman's laser pistol. "This has been a hell of a day," she said to herself more than anyone else. "I didn't survive killer rhinos to die at the end of the universe."

XYZ

Mickey came to the conclusion that the Torchwood psychics were crap when the two girls stepped back and shrugged. "He's just not there."

Jackie stepped forward from the group that had gathered in the medical ward and, thrusting her belly at the girls, gave them a piece of her overworked mind. "Of course he's there, you idiots! Look at him! He's right there!"

The paler of the two identical twins (was that possible?) pressed her lips together, rather unhappy with Mrs. Tyler. "Physically, he's there. Mentally? He's some place else."

Nudging Pete, Mickey took a few steps back from the hubbub of the twenty or so people who had gathered to figure out what the hell had happened to their prize specimen.

Not sure his idea was ready for public consumption, he leaned in to his boss and quietly explained. "He's been having these out-of-body experiences, right? What if he's found a way to help Rose. In the other universe. What if he's just–out of body again?"

"So do we try to kick his mind back into his body, or do we try to kick his body to wherever his mind is?" Pete wondered absently, as if he hadn't even realized that the thought had sprung from his mind, much less his lips. "Or should we even be bothering?

Mickey bit his cheek. "I think it's better to bother than not." He tried to explain. "See–he hasn't really understood what's been going on. So he might not have a handle on it. Or he might be bloody brilliant and know exactly what he's doing suddenly. Or he could be banking on us pulling him back into his body. He could be banking on us not. Either way, I think our bets are better if we at least try to get him back together."

"What?" Pete looked at him like he was speaking Greek.

Mickey sighed. It wasn't very often he was ahead of the curve, but he found it to be annoying. No wonder the Doctor hated him so much. "He's brilliant but not infallible. Err on the side of caution."

XYZ

Jack shook his head. "I appreciate the sentiment." Another slam caused the top of the door to come swinging out of its frame. "But put it down. You'll never take all of them out–those things have a lousy battery life." Scooping Rose into his arms, he gestured with his chin toward the Police Box. "In there."

As the door gave way in a cacophony of scraping metal, Martha ran to the wooden door, swung it open and held it for Jack. As soon as he and his load were in the ship, she closed the door, looking for a lock on the inside. "How do I lock this?" she asked in a panic–then jumped back from the door as something heavy and angry slammed into it.

The man looked up from the unconscious woman in his arms. "You don't. it just… does its thing."

"It just DOES ITS THING?" Martha jumped back from the door as whatever it was slammed into it again. Surprisingly the door quaked but didn't buckle. "Great!"

Where were the spaceships with their big blast doors and external monitors and…big lasers for fighting things off? Time and space travel isn't what she thought it would be, or what was advertised in the

Sliding Rose to the floor of the TARDIS, Jack thought about the door for a moment. When the rattling, echoing sound of pounding started up again, he scratched the back of his neck. "I guess that thing really can keep out hordes. I thought it was just a selling point."

Heels clacking on the metal grates in time to the pounding, Martha looked Rose over. It looked like the woman was just unconscious–but she was dealing with an alien. Who knew? "So what do we do now?"

Jack frowned. "Good question."

XYZ

"Do you want to know what I hate?"

Rose sighed mentally. "You're going to tell me anyway, aren't you?"

"That I'm stuck in a place in between both universes. All because I did something they teach you not to do in nursery school–never let down your mental guards. Why? Oh! There're NO MORE TIME LORDS! But that's not true anymore. And here you are, and here I am, and my only hope of getting unstuck is Rickey the Idiot. Which is depressing on so many levels. First, what if he thinks I'm doing this on purpose? Second… well, he's been saving me a lot lately. It makes me a little scared for the universes."

"Jack'll think of something."

"Yeah, he'll have sex with Martha Jones in my bed."

"Don't be crude."

"Rassilon–you are SUCH a Time Lord. Next you'll be telling me if it's fun, I can't do it."

"Shut up."

"Time Lord."

"Shut up."

"You're such a--"

"I said shut up!" Rose's voice was high pitched and clipped. Which was odd considering no physical form, much less sound, existed in this cloudy thick nothingness.

"Time Lord."

"When we're done with this… I'm killing you. Maybe you'll regenerate nicer."

"A complete and total Time Lord. They already did that once."

"Shut. Up. Shut up, and think of something clever."

"Why don't you think of something…. Time Lord."

"When we get through with this–I'm never talking to you ever again."

"Yes you will. You love it."

"Shut up."

XYZ

Martha liked the bedroom. It had an ephemeral quality, with the swirling symbols on the tapestries and woodwork, but the colouring was rustic with deep, earthy tones. The sheets were quite nice too.

Which was why she didn't mind sitting with Rose sometimes. The bed was big enough for it. She'd just plunk down on the duvet next to the still-sleeping figure, and she'd enjoy the ambiance. There wasn't much else to do, but wait.

Jack was familiar enough with the ship to make it dematerialize and rematerialize elsewhere on the planet, but they couldn't go back to where they were. They hit a recall button early on that didn't take them back to their originating point, the way Jack thought it should. All it did was pop up a hologram.

Martha had gasped when it started up–a gangly man in a huge coat appeared.

"This is Emergency Program Two. Rose, if you're seeing this–oh why do I even bother? Look–just don't get yourself killed, ok? You not getting killed is more important than me getting killed. You might not think that's the case, but it is. Twelve hundred years–ok, so I fudge my real age a lot, it makes me feel younger–is a long time to go on doing this. And if it comes to my imminent expiration, then fine, OK. But if I tried to send you home again, it's because things have really--REALLY gone to pot. If you're going to assault my ship again to do something stupid–just…don't get yourself killed, ok? And, um… see you in a little bit."

The hologram clicked off.

A second later, the central column started moving up and down, the way it had the few times the ship had traveled with her in it, but it slowed like a carousel coming to a stop, and didn't do anything.

Jack swore. "Shit. It doesn't have an origin point because my presence messed with the TARDIS' central identifier matrix."

"What?"

"Sat Nav didn't know where we were going, when we got here, so it doesn't know where we've come from, to send us back. We're really freakin' stuck." He sighed. "And I understand one out of every hundred systems on this ship. It's built for people who think fourth dimensionally."

"Aliens."

Wiping his hands on a rag, Jack nodded. "Time Lords."

And that had been that. Moving the ship had stopped the pounding at the door, and that was really the only bit of relief they'd gotten in all of this time. They'd spent three days waiting for something to happen with Rose. Then they'd spent half a day assuming nothing would, and they spent the next day after that wondering just what the hell to do, if the only person who understood how to make the ship fly through time and space remained as she was.

Jack had spent the last four hours trying to repair his damaged wristwatch thingy that he swore could travel through time and space. And here she sat, on this comfortable bed, staring up at the swirling symbols on the tapestries, flipping through the books the ship would translate for her, and ones that it wouldn't. She assumed the strange fractal language was the language of the Time Lords. It made sense–why would the ship translate something the captain could read?

There were worse places to wait.

That being said… she hated waiting.

XYZ

Pete nodded, dismissing the psychics. Turning to each of the Torchwood staff members who had been put on the case of the unconscious Doctor, made them go away as well.

When the room was empty, and it was down to just Mickey, Jackie and himself, Pete began. "Ok. We need to do whatever it is we're doing with him. Mickey, any clue how we get him back together?"

The younger man shrugged. "It was just an idea. I don't know how to make it work."

Next, Pete Tyler looked to his wife, who was sitting on the infirmary bed next to the Doctor, stroking his hair. She was muttering something about him being a stupid, stupid alien. She really did try to hate him, but sometimes…she was just such a bad liar. "Jacks… I don't want you to get upset."

Her hand dropped from the Doctor's messy, still damp head, like she just realized what she was doing and was somehow ashamed. "Too late for that. What's wrong now?"

Trying to be casual enough to not upset her further, while still being serious about the problem at hand, he slid his hands into his pockets. "Global temperature has been rising one degree every day for the six days. There's also activity on the floor we came through worlds on."

"The ghost room?" Mickey asked.

Pete nodded. "The energy readings are different than what we found before, but they're about five times more intense."

Mickey crossed his arms. "So we could fix him. Maybe."

Jackie was brushing wet hair off the Doctor's forehead again. It was a little creepy and disturbing to watch. "What about Rose?" Pete knew she was thinking as a mother and didn't care about this universe at just this moment. She just wanted her daughter safe.

Pete still had to live here, though. And he had an unborn daughter to keep safe.

When Jackie's hand wrapped around the limp, bony one on the bed, Pete looked away. "I don't think we can get him back. The teleporters don't work. I think it's the energy signature. It's changed. It could be going anywhere now."

"So we could have just about anything coming out of that breach at any minute. More Cybermen… Daleks…" Mickey trailed off with a frustrated sigh.

Pete nodded. "Or worse. We've already had alien debris washing through this afternoon. It's going to happen soon, whatever it is."

"Just great."

TBC…


End file.
